Enhancing Resilience through Forest Landscape Restoration: Conceptual Framework

This document is the second in a series intended to (1) identify and highlight the contribution of forest landscape restoration towards enhancing landscape resilience, as well as the resilience of communities dependent on forests (and the ecosystems services they provide); (2) promote understanding within the resilience community of how forest landscape restoration can enhance resilience; and (3) help build a better case to communicate restoration benefits in climate policy processes and mechanisms (e.g. adaptation, disaster risk reduction, co-benefits, etc.)

This guidance aims to help both forest landscape restoration and resilience practitioners and other
stakeholders to mainstream considerations of resilience into forest landscape restoration planning,
implementation and assessments, such that forest landscape restoration approaches and practices
contribute to enhancing socio-ecological resilience of whole landscapes and the communities that
depend on them.

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Cost and Benefits of Ecosystem Based Adaptation: The Case of the Philippines

EbA uses biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of an overall adaptation strategy to help people and communities adapt to the negative effects of climate change at local, national, regional, and global levels. It recognizes, and in fact highlights, the importance of equity, gender, and the role and importance of local and traditional knowledge, as well as species diversity. Furthermore, it provides co-benefits such as clean water and food for communities, risk reduction options and benefits, and other services crucial for livelihoods and human well-being. Appropriately designed ecosystem adaptation initiatives can also contribute to climate change mitigation by reducing emissions from ecosystem degradation, and enhancing carbon sequestration. There are a range of approaches that are used to assess economic benefits of goods and services and these same approaches can and are used to assess costs and benefits of adaptation options including EbA. The three most commonly used ones are 1) Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA); 2) Cost-Effective Analysis; and 3) Multi-criteria Analysis. In order to contribute to policy through improved decision making at the national level, two case studies are highlighted in this report that look at the costs and benefits of EbA in the Philippines.

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Synergies between Climate Mitigation and Adaptation in Forest Landscape Restoration

Forests have always been cleared to provide land uses necessary for human existence. This trend has naturally increased over time and now global estimates suggest, “that 30% of original forest cover has been converted for other uses and an additional 20% has been degraded.” Humans also benefit from resources from forests. The rural poor, in particular, benefit extensively from forest goods and services (such people are approximately 1.6 billion in number).ii IUCN has estimated the economic benefits of forests at USD 130 million per year.iii On the other side, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) calculate the costs in lost value from forest destruction to be between USD 2-5 trillion per year. Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) is a process that aims to regain ecological integrity and enhance human well-being in deforested or degraded forest landscapes. It involves people coming together to restore the function and productivity of degraded forest lands – through a variety of place-based interventions, including new tree plantings, managed natural regeneration, or improved land management. The purpose of this study is to understand the current discourse and practice on climate change mitigation and adaptation in FLR, as well as to analyze the implications for a better understanding the complementarities and synergies between mitigation and adaptation, specifically in the context of FLR. Both mitigation and adaptation are considered equally important to address with climate change. Developing countries, least developed countries (LDCs) and island states all now agree on instituting mitigation efforts as well as adaptation.

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Valuing Biodiversity. The economic case for biodiversity conservation in the Maldives.

In the last decade or so the world’s coastal areas have received a lot of attention – attention that has been spurred on specifically by the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004. Subsequently, the undeniable linkages between coastal resources and economic and human wellbeing have become more apparent. This is evident nowhere more so than in the Maldives – a nation of small islands dependent entirely on its coastal and marine resources, which contribute extensively to its economy and its people’s livelihoods. There are few examples in the world where an entire nation’s wellbeing is so strongly linked to its natural resource base. For such a country, any threat to its biodiversity means adverse impacts on its future development. Clearly then, there is a strong imperative to recognise and demonstrate that there is an economic – in addition to a biological and ecological – rationale to biodiversity conservation.

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Are the Mangroves for the Future? Empirical Evidence of the Value of Miani Hor Mangrove Ecosystem as a Basis for investment. IUCN Pakistan 2007

Investment in ecosystem conservation tends to be biased as investment decisions are based on costs and benefits; and more often than not benefits of ecosystem conservation remain undervalued. Recently however, investment in the conservation and management of mangrove ecosystems is increasingly being seen as a key element of sustainable livelihoods and economies, vulnerability reduction and disaster management. For the coastal poor in developing countries as well as the managers of mangrove ecosystems, the value in maintaining them is perhaps not surprising. Local users have long recognized the ecological functions and socio-economic values of mangroves to their lives and livelihoods. Mangrove ecosystems are highly productive areas contributing to the food chains of many species. Mangrove forests are therefore critical components of the ecosystem in that they provide complex habitat structure for numerous juvenile fish species. Overall the awareness about the ecological functions and values of mangrove ecosystems remain low among decision-makers. There is therefore, clearly a need to assess, calculate and share information on the economic values associated with mangroves – and the economic benefits of managing them wisely in the future.

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