Research Highlights: The global Forest Landscape Restoration ambitions could be impaired by projects that ignore key principles such as the engagement of local communities in decision making and implementation, equitable benefit sharing, and monitoring for adaptive management. This entails the danger of continued degradation, disappointed local stakeholders, and ultimately, project failure. Other projects face technical problems related to tree establishment and nursery production. Background and Objectives: There are high hopes for Forest and Landscape Restoration to regain ecosystem integrity and enhance human well-being in deforested and degraded areas. We highlight various problems and success factors experienced during project implementation on a global scale. Materials and Methods: We use data from a global online survey to identify common obstacles and success factors for the implementation of forest restoration. Results: While the majority of respondents reported successful projects, others indicate drastic problems and failed projects. Major obstacles to forest restoration experienced by survey respondents were a lack of local stakeholder involvement and a mismatch between goals of local communities and restoration managers, as well as environmental, anthropogenic, and technical barriers to tree regeneration. Conclusions: When local communities, their goals, and needs are disregarded in project planning and implementation, as reported from various cases in our survey and the limited available literature, there is a risk of project failure. Failed projects and disappointed stakeholders, as well as discouraged funders and policy-makers, could lessen the momentum of global forest restoration ambitions. Adhering to key principles of Forest and Landscape Restoration can promote much-needed community support, with the potential to overcome barriers to forest regeneration and enable communities for the protection, management, and monitoring of the restored forests beyond the limited project and funding periods. Research is needed to gain a better understanding of the perception of local communities towards restoration activities. Further studies on the implementation of forest restoration at the intersection of environmental factors, socioeconomic conditions, forest regeneration/silviculture, and nursery production are needed.

Land use transformation at the farm level is attributed to household decision-making, reflected by the behavior and activities of smallholder farmers. Unfortunately, household decision-making in local communities and its determinants are site-specific and hardly understood. This study uses multistage purposive selection of households as a unit for the analysis to investigate the transformation from pure agriculture to farm forest mosaics, especially through woodlot establishment. We use key informants, household surveys, and observations to obtain data on decision-making amongst 84 farm households in Nyantonzi parish, Masindi district, Uganda, as an example. Specifically, the study addresses four research questions. Firstly, what is the current status of gender-based decision-making at the household level? Secondly, is decision making within farm households individualistic or collective? Thirdly, which factors are considered to select annual, perennial and tree-crop farm management regimes? Fourthly, what determinants influence the decision-making process and the likelihood of woodlot establishment? A multilevel analysis comprising parametric statistical models and binary logistic regression is applied to assess difference in household natural, physical, human, and social capital, highlight gender roles, and obtain factors associated to selection of crops and determinants of woodlot establishment at the farm level, respectively. Results reveal that gender based decision-making is clearly disaggregated on the basis of husbands and wives and it is individualistic, mostly dominated by husbands with lower participation by wives and other family members. Households consider various factors before making any decisions, e.g., market prices for both annual and perennial crops, food consumption for annual crops, ease of management, and yields from the previous season for the tree-crop management regimes. The likelihood for woodlot establishment is positively influenced by the willingness and intention of households to establish woodlots and relative age of household head. However, knowledge of land use Policies, Laws, and Regulations (PLRs) in relation to tree planting and harvesting and access to non-farm income reduce the likelihood of woodlot establishment. Here, we recommend that current and future forest land restoration initiatives focus on reducing the gender gap and increase women’s participation in decision making, provide market information platforms on wood products, and include woodlot farmers in social organization. Current PLRs on tree tenure should be improved and clearly communicated by using the existing communication assets and social gatherings as channels of change and influence for decision-making.

Medicinal plants’ production systems in Indonesia’s rural Java play a crucial role in sustaining local livelihoods and healthcare needs. Medicinal plants are managed by locals independently based on household preferences and endowments through wild gathering and cultivation-based production systems. However, these situations create a continual problem of weak bargaining positions. Thus, this study aimed to assess local needs and potential in supporting medicinal plants production systems management in Java, Indonesia, with the view to advance local actors' perspectives in a multistakeholder platform. The Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) approach proved useful in incorporating local knowledge in the planning and development of strategies. We implemented PRA techniques, such as problem identification based on a cause-and-effect diagram, group discussion and brainstorming, preference ranking of priority species, and a Venn diagram based on stakeholders' classification. These were carried out with 150 local actors from four villages. Results reveal that Candlenut tree are the preferred species in the wild gathering system, while Javanese turmeric and Broadleaf plantain are preferred in the cultivation-based production systems. Urgent interests include more lucrative gathering and cultivation, a remunerative market, and a reliable local economic institution. The PRA results demonstrate that local actors' involvement is highly required in administering production systems to enhance medicinal plants’ sustainable production and management.

Success of forest restoration at farm level depends on the farmer´s decision-making and the constraints to farmers’ actions. There is a gap between the intentions and the actual behavior towards restoration in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Global South. To understand this discrepancy, our study uses empirical household survey data to design and parameterize an agent-based model. WEEM (Woodlot Establishment and Expansion Model) has been designed based on household socio-demographics and projects the temporal dynamics of woodlot numbers in Uganda. The study contributes to a mechanistic understanding of what determines the current gap between farmer’s intention and actual behavior. Results reveal that an increase in knowledge of the current forest policies laws and regulations (PLRs) from 18% to 50% and to 100% reduces the average number of woodlots by 18% and 79% respectively. Lack of labor reduces the number of woodlots by 80%. Increased labor requirement from 4 to 8 and to 12 man-days, reduces the number of woodlots by 26% and 61% respectively. WEEM indicates that absence of household labor and de facto misconception of PLRs “perceived tenure insecurity” constrains the actual behavior of farmers. We recommend forest PLRs to provide full rights of use and ownership of trees established on private farmland. Tree fund in the case of Uganda should be operationalized to address the transaction costs and to achieve the long-term targets of forest land restoration.

Forest and Landscape Restoration faces governance challenges due to social heterogeneity and a complex policy environment, creating a Gordian knot of contrasting needs and strategies. Scholars propose common entry points for inclusive governance and reconciling restoration strategies, but empirical evidence is scarce. The study addresses this gap by exploring common entry points from actor clusters and trade-offs for inclusive governance, and by identifying how actor traits and policy components are associated with FLR strategy decisions. It utilizes data from 269 actor interviews in Ethiopia, including actor categories, internal traits (deep core values, ecosystem service value, beliefs, and norms), restoration strategies, and the status of the policy environment. The analysis is based on the Agency-Structure framework using ordination and rank-ordered probit regression. Results reveal significant trade-offs between timber-pole production versus culture, NTFP versus soil vitality services, food versus microclimate services, biodiversity and water regulation versus carbon sequestration. Based on the preference scores, we identified five possible FLR groups: Nature-Norm Stewards (cluster 1), Food-security stewards (cluster 2), Market-driven utilitarians (cluster 3), Livelihood-oriented stewards (cluster 4), and sustainable timber and NTFP stewards (cluster 5). With possible entry points coming from Nature-Norm Stewards and Market-driven utilitarians. Reconciliation of assisted-natural-regeneration (ANR) strategies requires a focus on the bio-normative dimension, including biodiversity and cultural services, with coherent policies. Active strategies (plantations) necessitate the eco-timber dimension with policy clarity. Agroforestry requires a focus on the NTFP-oriented “soil-averse”, eco-timber, and biodiversity “eco-carbon” dimensions, along with coherent and inclusive policies. However, for sustainability and permanence, both nature-based and livelihood-based traits need to be considered simultaneously. Thus, calling for a more integrated landscape with numerous strategies. Actors perceive the policy environment as insufficient in clarity and inclusiveness, and as partly incoherent. Policy clarity and inclusiveness limit ANR decisions, whereas coherence limits decisions on active strategies. Thus, successfully implementing national and international FLR targets and ensuring sustainability requires establishing policy instruments to bridge the contrasting value-beliefs among actors. Our theory-based framework for identifying common practical entry points for inclusive governance and decision-making for FLR strategy has proven applicable and is recommended for further use.