The nine actions necessary for successful ecological restoration

  • August 19, 2022
The nine actions necessary for successful ecological restoration

Michael Pashkevich is first author of a paper on what works when it comes to ecological restoration work.

The current UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration offers unprecedented attention, research funding, and capacity to support restoration initiatives, aiming to inspire a large-scale, cross-cultural movement for global ecological restoration.

Michael Pashkevich et al

Researchers have developed a set of nine broad-based actions to guide ecological restoration to the benefit of both nature and wider society.

The nine actions are outlined in a recent studypublished in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution. First author is Gates Cambridge Scholar Michael Pashkevich [2017], who did his PhD in Zoology.

The study draws on case studies in tropical agroecosystems, where restoration can provide substantial socioecological benefits at relatively low costs, to demonstrate the actions being used successfully in practice. It also highlights cases where poorly designed restoration has been damaging.

The researchers say that, to successfully restore tropical agroecosystems and maximise benefits, initiatives must begin by considering ‘who’ should be involved in and benefit from restoration, and ‘what’, ‘where’, and ‘how’ restoration should occur.

The nine actions are:

  • Involve a diverse network of stakeholders at all stages and in all parts of restoration initiatives
  • Consider the economic benefits and costs of restoration
  • Collect more baseline data from observational studies
  • Inform algorithms to better identify restoration priority areas
  • Implement large-scale, long-term experiments to test restoration strategies
  • Increase study of additional biomes and regions
  • Include traditional ecological knowledge and local farming practices in restoration initiatives
  • Develop techniques to assess and improve restoration over time
  • Share results and data openly and widely.

While the researchers state that the actions are only a starting point for change and recognise that there are individual circumstances that will affect restoration in different regions, they say now is the time to take action. They state: “The current UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration offers unprecedented attention, research funding, and capacity to support restoration initiatives, aiming to inspire a large-scale, cross-cultural movement for global ecological restoration.”

*Picture credit: Neil Palmer/CIAT – Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28394015

Latest News

Meaning well and doing well

Elijah Darden was brought up with a strong sense of health inequalities and an awareness that multiple approaches affect wellbeing. Through his MPhil in Population Health Sciences, he is keen […]

Politics and law impact: Gates Cambridge at 25

This month’s 25th anniversary impact feature focuses on politics and law. The last 25 years have seen major political change across the world and Gates Cambridge Scholars have been working […]

Global South voices ‘marginalised in AI Ethics’

A Gates Cambridge Scholar is first author of a paper how AI Ethics is sidelining Global South voices, reinforcing marginalisation. The study, Distributive Epistemic Injustice in AI Ethics: A Co-productionist […]

First FRS for Gates Cambridge

Professor Alessio Ciulli has become the first Gates Cambridge Scholar to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society [FRS]. Professor Ciulli, the founder and Director of the University of […]