Enhancing forest sector engagement in ecosystem restoration
The Advisory Committee on Sustainable Forest-based Industries (ACSFI) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in collaboration with The Forests Dialogue (TFD) convened a roundtable on enhancing the forest sector’s engagement in ecosystem restoration, as a satellite event of FAO’s 26th session of its Committee on Forestry (COFO26).
Some twenty participants, including representatives of forest industry associations, forest product companies, intergovernmental organizations and civil society, explored how forest-based industries can scale up ecosystem restoration efforts, enhance overall impact, share best practices, and examine strategic benefits they can derive individually as well as collectively from ecosystem restoration.
The challenge of ecosystem restoration remains a pressing issue for the globe. Forests are home to most of the terrestrial biodiversity (75% of bird species, 68% of mammal species and about 60,000 tree species). Between 1990 and 2020, deforestation and forest degradation have led to a decrease in the world's forest area of around 178 million hectares, which is equivalent to the size of Libya, meaning that the opportunities for ecosystem restoration are very significant.
Enhancing the involvement of the forest sector in the conservation and restoration of forest ecosystems has the potential to have a positive impact on biodiversity and forest health, and in turn, on the sustainability of the companies’ own raw materials sourcing and commercial activities along the value chain.
The roundtable was organized around three main objectives:
- Build trust and understanding through sharing experiences, questions, challenges and best practices for ecosystem restoration;
- Discuss a vision and plan forward for forest-based industries to enhance ecosystem restoration;
- Scope opportunities and needs for further dialogues to drive understanding and action in specific contexts and contribute to global learnings.
The roundtable opened with three presentations to set the scene for the day:
- Lyndall Bull, Forestry Officer FAO: Decade for Ecosystem Restoration;
- Associate Professor Rajat Panwar, Oregon State University: Need for ecosystem restoration; and
- Dr Gary Dunning, Executive Director, The Forests Dialogue: Objectives and agenda.
Participants then took part in a range of interactive and group-based discussions to identify and consider items such as:
- Modes of engagement the private sector is using to achieve landscape restoration;
- Needs, barriers and strategies to increasing and scaling up ecosystem restoration on the ground;
- Opportunities for scaling-up ecosystem restoration through collaboration; and
- Identification of actions to catalyze engagement and participation in ecosystem restoration.
The day closed by identifying specific next steps and actions to operationalize the identified strategies. These were:
- Build unity within the forest sector through a shared ecosystem restoration vision and share learnings;
- Develop good metrices to facilitate goal setting and monitoring of the outcomes from restoration activities;
- Collaborate with other stakeholder groups in restoration activities to build understanding and enhance impact;
- Understand how degraded land and forest sector capacity aligns to facilitate on-the-ground action contributing to restoration commitments under the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and related initiatives;
- Establish new business cases for ecosystem restoration based on research and practice to better understand and demonstrate the value proposition of the private sector to engage in ecosystem restoration;
- Identify and build understanding about business and financial models that enhance shared value and deliver multiple outcomes in support of ecosystem restoration.
A Roundtable summary report summarizing the outcomes of the day can be found here.