Locally controlled forest restoration - A governance and market oriented approach to resilient landscapes

Title

Locally Controlled Forest Restoration - A governance and market oriented approach to resilient landscapes

Background

In the last decade, Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) has been adopted for global, regional and national commitments for multiple goals such as climate mitigation, water security, biodiversity and forest resources to support rural livelihoods. Despite extensive international support for climate and development cooperation, practical results and continuity have been limited after project-based support ends. Incentives for local actors is one major driver often missing. The failure of FLR to reduce poverty by creating local value maintains the status quo of land use dependency, forest degradation and loss while also failing to create the desired benefits for biodiversity, water management and carbon mitigation.

This International Training Programme (ITP) uses a systemic approach to build capacity broadly in all actors with a stake in FLR. As the programme title indicates, the emphasis is on driving scalable FLR outside of support programmes. The programme objective is to build capacity in organisations to establish governance, tenure and business support that encourages local smallholders, communities and entrepreneurs to become agents of change based on competitive, transparent and scalable value chains, leaving no one behind.

Learning Objectives

The ITP‘s overall objective is to accumulate competences in Locally Controlled Forest Restoration (LoCoFoRest) to enable scalable local business as a driver for FLR and, therefore, improved livelihoods as well as ecosystem services. Using a systemic approach, the programme aims to attract participants from across the FLR sector (government, civil society, private sector, research and education). The participants will broaden their understanding of:

  • FLR challenges, opportunities and prerequisites for multiple desired goals
  • Water and other ecosystem services in developing landscapes
  • Social and governance aspects of LoCoFoRest
  • How forest product value-chains can drive sustainable rural / urban development and FLR.
  • Analysing and preparing proposals for organisational change to promote LoCoFoRest (in carrying out a "Change Project")

Expected outcomes include increased understanding and better ability to support and interact around LoCoFoRest in FLR. One long-term target impact is for smallholders to have tenure and have obtained incentives and capacity to restore and manage forests sustainably in connection to growing bio-economical markets.

Content and Structure

This training programme focuses on the economic, social and ecological aspects of forest restoration as well as the potential of rural development based on forest products and eco-system services. The first part of the course is an online course, aimed at giving all participants from diferent stakeholder organisations a minimum level of knowledge, as well as some depth, of the key aspects of the programme.

A start-up meeting will clearify the programme content and working forms before the onlie course. In the middle of the programme an intensive one-week workshop will contain intereaction with expert mentors and field visits etc, with an emphasis on the participants "Change Projects". The first meeting will be physical meetings in the participants countries and the workshop will be for all participand countries held in Sweden. 

In the second part of the programme, mentors will support participants to plan and implement the "Change Project" (see more information in the web-link below). 

Methodology

The ITP is based on current evidence of the economic, social and ecological aspects of FLR and on sharing experiences between a multitude of actors and country contexts during the training. Swedish forest history is used as a background and inspiration. Sweden managed to restore unsustainably exploited forests through broad societal investment to sustain forest production and increase industrial value. Swedish smallholder organisations, governance and policies, make an interesting backdrop, as it balances different goals for forest legislation and the work on improving the protection of water and biodiversity to meet forest certification standards as well as EU-legislation. This is set against the global challenges of meeting future demands for biobased forest products as well as biodiversity, water management, carbon storage and fossil materials substitution.  

Targeted Audience

Only candidates nominated by an appropriate organisation to make individual applications according to national rules will be considered. We are looking for a mix of participants: men, woman, government, civil society, private sector, academia, teachers etc, from a variety of sectors/interest groups. In general, the programme only accepts nationals in FLR-relevant positions, employed (or engaged) with an organisation (non-UN) based in their country. Applicants should have a minimum of three to five years professional experience, but still have at least a decade or two to give in professional activity. Ideally you have an academic qualification, however we can also consider people without a university degree but with relevant experience.

 

More information