Panel 3.3. Restoring the Commons: Linking ecosystem restoration to people and institutions

Ecological restoration has emerged as a global priority in the last decade, reshaping commons around the globe. Yet many landscapes have long histories of restoration or similar activities, which are poorly documented. Understanding these histories can provide key lessons for the design of effective restoration programs. In this paper I examine the history of government-led tree planting programs in the western himalayas of Himachal Pradesh, India. Drawing on government records, including working plans, project planning documents, and annual reports, I show that tree planting programs have been conceptualized to meet a wide variety of public needs, ranging from the provision of fuelwood and timber to the restoration of ecosystem integrity. The rhetoric of these activities have changed over the decades in response to the whims of funding organizations and shifting conceptualizations of the role of the state in fostering well-being in the western Himalaya. I also document a shift away from programs aimed primarily at industrial output, and towards supporting the livelihoods of the rural poor, a shift which may be correlated with growing local democracy at the local level and/or declining direct dependence of the population on natural resources. I conclude with a call for greater historical research into the ways that landscapes and government programs have been jointly reshaped through restoration programs.

Restoring ecosystems, and forests in particular, has become a global priority. At larger scales, forest restoration must necessarily reconcile the needs and priorities of multiple stakeholders and, in doing so, raises several governance challenges. Approaching governance in the context of forest restoration through an interdisciplinary lens provides a complex picture consistent with the multiple factors that impact forest restoration. Focusing on one specific governance challenge, namely, how to balance global to local benefits of forest restoration, serves to demonstrate the complexity and value of approaching these challenges with an interdisciplinary lens. This paper presents several options, including: the need for a multi-scale and functioning governance structures or mechanisms involving decision-makers from local to national and international scales; considering multiple brokers (or “intermediaries”) as important leverage points; sharing tools with national governments that help to ensure that restoration brings a balanced flow of benefits to their citizens; redressing power imbalances by strengthening social capital and building the capacity of community-level organizations; recognizing rights (to land or forest tenure rights – whether to communities or privately to local community members); creating a dedicated funding stream for restoration; changing the focus from quantitative targets for tree planting/restoration to more multi-objective based approaches; acknowledging and emphasizing that forest restoration can yield multiple benefits for many individuals or groups, and ensuring that these can be realized.

Urban transformation of spaces around cities into urban areas, is altering the basic functions of the local ecosystem, especially the commons. Urban development also leads to changes values, perceptions and identifies of communities, loss of local knowledge in addition to the changes in dominant institutional and governance structures. In this paper, we explore how urban transformation and associated changes in governance has influenced the role of community actors in conservation and restoration of five distinct lakes in urban Bangalore. We map the actors involved and the types of interactions, focusing mainly on the role of community in gathering information, local ecological knowledge and financial resources needed for conservation of commons from the larger network of actors including state and private sector. Social network analysis is used to map and visualise the types of interactions and the role of actors for each lake from within the network of actors. Gephi, an open access social network software is used to undertake network analysis and visualise the interactions. We highlight that interactions between actors involved in restoration of lakes are mainly based on institutional landscape enabling exchange of information, knowledge, and resources in addition to building trust between actors. We identify that though the lakes are interconnected, actors responsible are fragmented with limited interactions among them. We conclude that the role of the state though important is not decisive and there is an increasing role played by the community and non-state actors in ensuring conservation and restoration of lakes, especially applying the principles of nature-based solutions leading to an arrangement of ‘governance beyond the state’.

The global concern for deforestation, land degradation, biodiversity loss, and climate change has prompted the implementation of strategies to mitigate observed damaging socioecological impacts. One contemporary strategy being promoted to tackle these crises is Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR). FLR interventions are often implemented with a landscape approach and take the form of polycentric governance systems as they involve multiple sectoral actors across scales that act as decision-making centers. However, pervasive institutional fragmentation, power imbalances, and lack of integration across such decision-making centers/actors disparately involved in restoration endeavors represent complex governance challenges. Addressing such challenges requires effective institutional functions and mechanisms such as coordination, social learning, and equitable resource distribution. Also, the diversity of sectoral actors within a landscape may result in governance failure if enough attention is not devoted to power struggles and asymmetries.

This study aims to elucidate the nature of the institutional functions and processes and related power dynamics in FLR polycentric governance systems, identifying which mechanisms are necessary for effective governance in restoration interventions. Using two case studies from Ghana, this study leverages a polycentricity theoretical lens to examine how multi-scale governance structures, institutional processes, and their interactions facilitate effective integrated restoration polycentric governance systems.

The study will blend insights from a social network analysis with qualitative data, including interviews, focus group discussions, and document analysis, to analyze (1) institutional mechanisms and processes that facilitate restoration implementation; and (2) how power relations impact these governance processes.

Theoretically, this research will fill knowledge gaps in polycentricity studies by engaging empirically with institutional structures, processes, and mediating factors like power dynamics. Shedding light on the complexity of situated restoration governance systems and power relations can help unravel why and how governance failure and conflicts occur and what necessary institutional functions and processes to put in place to mitigate them.

The pressure to create impact continued to emerge as the climate crisis worsened. To this end, various stakeholders, including the Government of Indonesia, set an ambitious target to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions through the restoration of wetlands, mainly mangroves and peatlands, over the last decade. Realizing this pledge calls for broader contributions, which research organizations can play a role in through their participatory action research (PAR). PAR employs the principles of adaptive collaborative management, where activities incur in an iterative process, allowing for corrective measures and open-ended outcomes. We conducted PAR on peatland and mangrove restoration in Riau and South Sumatra Province, Indonesia, in the last six years, focusing on experiential knowledge and co-creation of community-based restoration practices and livelihood transformation on the ground. We underscored the importance of commoning in implementing PAR, as we facilitate the participating community group defined and carried out their shared interests moving forward. Community participation, co-action, leadership, social capital, and local institutions persist to be the key factors driving the success of the intervention, under the umbrella of collective interests generated from the commoning process.

Ecological restoration has emerged as one of the key global mechanisms for nations to mitigate climate change and achieve their net zero emission targets. But there is no common agreement on what would constitute restoration, which has led to a broad national policy directive of planting more trees, particularly in the Global South. Multiple studies in recent times have pointed out the consequent failure of restoration projects, and an urgent need for further research on how existing institutions and tenure systems influence success of restoration programmes. Post-colonial countries like India are characterised by state-controlled forest regions with concurrent multiple forms of tenure systems. Our paper explores how the broad objective of forest restoration has been interpreted and translated into practise in the specific context of the Western Ghats in the state of Karnataka in Southern India. We study how restoration objectives, processes and decision making varies across state, common and private property in forest land. We use secondary data, forest department records, and interviews with forest officials and village representatives to study changes in tree planting practices of the state forest department in the district of Uttara Kanada. We supplement this with primary data from a 900-household survey across two forested blocks of the Uttara Kanada district to analyse household choices on tree planting and how people of different sections respond to restoration priorities. Our findings indicate key conflicts around the choice of plant species to be planted and institutions through which the planting is to be carried out. We argue that restoration practises advocated by changing external pressures and priorities of the Indian state have resulted in exclusion of the marginalised sections and a very narrow realisation of environmental goals. It is necessary to reframe restoration policy in region specific contexts, addressed to existing land relations, the nature of the commons and the priorities of the local communities.