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1. Assessing local perceptions of deforestation, forest restoration, and the role of agroecology for agroecosystem restoration in northern Malawi

   https://doi.org/10.1002/ldr.4238  

   Kpienbaareh, Daniel ; Luginaah, Isaac ; Bezner Kerr, Rachel ; Wang, Jinfei ; Poveda, Katja ; Steffan‐Dewenter, Ingolf ; Lupafya, Esther ; Dakishoni, Laifolo ( March 2022 , Land Degradation & Development)

   Deforestation drives climate change and reinforces food insecurity in forest dependent communities. What drives deforestation varies by location and is shaped by livelihood systems. But how locals perceive restoration is crucial for developing restoration policies. Evidence suggests that applying sustainable farming strategies can potentially restore forests and sustain livelihoods. Applying a broad-based conceptualization of deforestation and restoration in policymaking, however, results in missed opportunities for addressing deforestation and restoration. Here, we explore the drivers of deforestation, the perceptions of restoration, and the challenges to restoration among smallholder farmers in northern Malawi and examine how agroecology can contribute to restoring degraded agroecosystems. Participants report agricultural land expansion, charcoal production, climate change, burnt brick production, and government subsidies as the major drivers of deforestation. We observed that although perceptions of forest restoration reflect farmers' traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) to include reclamation of degraded farmlands, reconstruction of native tree species, and replacement of felled trees on farmlands, there are challenges including splitting families to gain access to more subsidized fertilizers and food aid, embedded cultural practices, growing demand for charcoal in cities, and weak ecosystem governance structures that hinder the effectiveness of restoration efforts. We, however, do find that agroecological intensification can increase yield from smaller farmlands and allow for larger and longer-lasting fallows of spare lands which regenerate forests. Key overarching implications of these findings include the need to integrate livelihoods more explicitly into restoration plans, accounting for TEK in restoration policies in forest-dependent communities and encouraging the adoption of agroecology. 

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2. Contextual factors that enable forest users to engage in tree-planting for forest restoration

   Chang, Kimberlee ; Andersson, Krister P. ( July 2019 , Land use policy)

   So­cial, bio­phys­i­cal, and in­sti­tu­tional con­texts af­fect for­est users’ in­cen­tives to work to­gether to re­store forests. With re­newed gov­ern­ment com­mit­ments to sup­port such ac­tiv­i­ties, we ar­gue that ef­fec­tive in­ter­ven­tions need to con­sider sev­eral con­text-spe­cific fac­tors – such as the user groups’ fu­ture dis­count rates, op­por­tu­nity costs, and col­lec­tive-ac­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties – be­cause these fac­tors will help de­ter­mine the ef­fec­tive­ness of such in­ter­ven­tions. To test the ef­fects of a suite of con­tex­tual fac­tors, we an­a­lyzed ob­ser­va­tions from 184 dif­fer­ent groups in 133 forests across eight de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. We find that the com­bi­na­tion of cer­tain en­abling fac­tors in­creases the prob­a­bil­ity of users un­der­tak­ing for­est im­prove­ment ac­tiv­i­ties, and that so­cial con­texts can con­di­tion the ef­fect of in­sti­tu­tional and bio­phys­i­cal con­texts. Our find­ings carry im­pli­ca­tions for the de­sign and im­ple­men­ta­tion of fu­ture in­ter­ven­tions to re­store forests in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. 

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3. Contextual factors that enable forest users to engage in tree-planting for forest restoration

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.05.036  

   Chang, Kimberlee ; Andersson, Krister P. ( May 2021 , Land Use Policy)

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4. Predation pressure by birds and arthropods on herbivorous insects affected by tropical forest restoration strategy: Predation pressure in tropical forest restorations

   https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.12693  

   Roels, Steven M. ; Porter, Jade L. ; Lindell, Catherine A. ( March 2018 , Restoration Ecology)
5. Local tropical forest restoration strategies affect tree recruitment more strongly than does landscape forest cover

   https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.12814  

   Holl, Karen D. ; Reid, John Leighton ; Chaves-Fallas, José Miguel ; Oviedo-Brenes, Federico ; Zahawi, Rakan A. ; Brudvig, ed., Lars ( August 2017 , Journal of Applied Ecology)