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Governance innovations from a multi-stakeholder coalition to implement large-scale Forest Restoration in Brazil
World Development Perspectives 3 (2016) 15–17
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
World Development Perspectives journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wdp
Case report
Governance innovations from a multi-stakeholder coalition to implement large-scale Forest Restoration in Brazil Pedro H.S. Brancalion a,⇑, Severino Ribeiro Pinto b, Ludmila Pugliese c, Aurélio Padovezi d, Ricardo Ribeiro Rodrigues e, Miguel Calmon f, Helena Carrascosa g, Pedro Castro h, Beto Mesquita i a
Departament of Forest Sciences, ‘‘Luiz de Queiroz” College of Agriculture, University of São Paulo, Av. Pádua Dias 11, Piracicaba, SP 13418-260, Brazil Centro de Pesquisas Ambientais do Nordeste (Cepan), Rua Dom Pedro Henrique, 167 Recife, PE, Brazil Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact, Executive Secretariat, Brazil d World Resources Institute, Brazil e Departament of Biological Sciences, ‘‘Luiz de Queiroz” College of Agriculture, University of São Paulo, Av. Pádua Dias 11, Piracicaba, SP 13418-260, Brazil f Global Forest and Climate Change Programa (GFCCP), International Union for Conservation of Nature, Washington, DC, USA g Environmental Secretariat of São Paulo State, Brazil h Reserva da Biosfera da Mata Atlântica, Brazil i Conservation International, Brazil b c
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 21 October 2016 Revised 8 November 2016 Accepted 9 November 2016 Available online 16 November 2016
a b s t r a c t An effective large-scale forest landscape restoration program requires the mobilization and engagement of a diverse group of stakeholders and sectors. In the Atlantic Forest biome of Brazil, a coalition of more than 270 members represented by private sector, governments, NGOs and research organizations joined efforts to transform the way large-scale and high-quality restoration is governed and implemented. Ó 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Keywords: Atlantic Forest Environmental policies Large-scale restoration Stakeholder engagement
1. Introduction Forest and landscape restoration has been now promoted at an unprecedented scale, shifting from local projects implemented by conservation NGOs to multi-million-hectares programs supported and coordinated by major multilateral international organizations, governments, and the private sector interested in reverting degradation and minimizing the impacts of climate change at a planetary scale. A relevant challenge in this context is how to coordinate restoration efforts and remove the major barriers preventing their advance at the landscape level. Until recently topdown governance approaches were a common characteristic found in historical large-scale tree planting programs, including the use of slaves and emperor decisions to implement the Tijuca Forest in Brazil and government programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps of in EUA in 1930’s and more recent programs in South Korea and China. However, in spite of the relative success of these initiatives to increase tree cover in degraded landscapes, a
⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (P.H.S. Brancalion). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wdp.2016.11.003 2452-2929/Ó 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
top-down approach also had some failures and may not be viable in most countries where forest and landscape restoration is expected to be implemented in the coming years. This holds true in democratic countries, not ruled by a strong central government, in which society voluntary engagement, through a bottom-up approach, is essential to achieve success. Contemporary restoration programs have then to deal with agricultural and environmental policy, legislation, stakeholder mobilization and engagement, conflict mediation, markets, and innovation development. In other fields of human activity, similar challenges have been faced by the establishment of associations, summing forces of several organizations to push modifications in society structures to bring benefits to the sector they represent, including lobby. However, restoration is a multi-disciplinary field of activity composed by several different stakeholder groups and sectors, like subnational governments, agricultural and forestry companies, research institutions, NGOs, traditional communities, and landowners. This inherent characteristic of the restoration movement challenges the way restorationists pursue structural modifications in policies, markets and other fields of activity to make large-scale restoration viable, in which establishing associations to represent the restoration sector may not be enough.
16
P.H.S. Brancalion et al. / World Development Perspectives 3 (2016) 15–17
In the Atlantic Forest biome of Brazil, a coalition of more than 270 members represented by private sector, governments, NGOs and research organizations joined efforts to transform the way large-scale restoration is governed and implemented (Calmon et al., 2011; Melo et al., 2013). The Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact (AFRP) is a multi-stakeholder coalition established in 2009 with the aim to restore 15 million hectares of the Atlantic Forest by 2050, which will double native forest cover from approximately 15–30%. The motivations for achieving this goal include preventing loss of biodiversity in one of the world’s top five global hotspots for biodiversity conservation, provision of ecosystem services for over 60% of the Brazilian population living within the boundaries of this biome, generation of thousands of green jobs, increasing income, and compliance of the forest code (Brancalion, Viani, Calmon, Carrascosa, & Rodrigues, 2013). In this case study, we describe the innovations resulting from this approach to govern tropical forest landscape restoration at large scale. 2. Governance innovations Technological innovations are evidently crucial in restoration, in which obsolete and ineffective methods are still being used and have produced poor results (Rodrigues, Lima, Gandolfi, & Nave, 2009); however, restoration may obtain some of the greatest benefits by innovations in processes, changing the way stakeholders and sectors interact, negotiate, and deal with potential conflicts and synergies. We will present in this section four main innovations promoted by the AFRP to improve the way large-scale and high-quality restoration is governed. 2.1. Mobilization and engagement of a diverse group of stakeholders and sectors Before the AFRP, each organization or institution was trying to overcome complex and challenging barriers for its activities based on individual restoration efforts and without any coordination and collaboration with other organizations dealing with the same problems. Consequently, some fundamental challenges for the advance of restoration, like the lack of financial mechanisms and economic incentives to support restoration, could not be overcome and the foresight ideas representing solutions were spreading very slowly. For example, each organization working at the Atlantic Forest was using its own protocol or methodology to monitor its restoration projects and some of them were poorly designed. As a result, the comparison of restoration approaches among projects in the different regions and the identification of promising solutions for achieving large scale and high quality restoration in the Atlantic Forest was not possible. Moreover, scarce funds were in many cases wasted during the effort to gather information that was not relevant to assess restoration success and support adaptive management. A group of researchers and NGOs professionals then realized that the advanced stage of degradation in the Atlantic Forest was not reversed despite of the 20+ years of investment on restoration projects. They came to the conclusion that the only way to change the situation was to create a coalition with all stakeholders engaged on restoration to foster large-scale restoration in the biome. This coalition was then established as a collaborative network, minimizing competition and promoting synergistic solutions that would benefit all members and the ones that depend on the goods and services from the Atlantic Forest biome. Some key NGOs, governments, private companies, and research institutions were contacted in advance the establishment of the AFRP to ensure buy-in from a group of excellence with potential to legitimate the initiative and attract other members. This group included
individuals and organizations with the largest recognition and practical experience in conserving and restoring the Atlantic Forest biome, with decades of involvement in public policies development, programs implementation and knowledge generation. A ‘‘core” group was formed with the goal to develop the concept of the coalition and produce two products to be disseminated during the launching – a map of potential areas for restoration in the Atlantic Forest and a state of the art book with the best restoration knowledge and experiences. After two years the coalition was launched in April 2009 and since then many new organizations became members of the AFRP to shape the way restoration is being developed in the biome. Regarding the problem of using several monitoring protocols and methodologies, the AFRP promoted a collaborative effort with the participation of more than 70 experts to develop and implement a science-based monitoring protocol with a set of ecological, social, environmental, and management indicators. The protocol is being used by several members to assess restoration success and propose adaptive management. 2.2. Development of a collaborative platform for achieving restoration solutions Because the goal of the AFRP is to develop solutions to address restoration challenges and problems shared by most of its members, the solutions have to be generated collaboratively. One approach that the AFRP have been using successfully and costeffective is to use the knowledge and expertise of the members by establishing working groups to address the different thematic areas: science and technology, socio-economy, fund raising, policy, communication, gender, and remote sensing. For instance, the map on potential areas for restoration that include the areas where restoration is mandatory by the law and the areas with low opportunity costs (i.e., low productivity pasturelands with steep slopes), was produced by a team of GIS specialists from the member institutions (Melo et al., 2013). The working groups are composed of individuals from governments, private companies, NGOs, and researcher institutions and respond to the demands of the coordination council of the coalition. The ‘‘products” being developed by the working groups under the AFRP ‘‘umbrella” helped mainstream some of the products into the vision and mission of some organizations. 2.3. Harmonization of regional socio-ecological specificities into a common vision The innovation ‘model’ promoted by the AFRP helps to mainstream current small-scale, isolated restoration efforts into a large-scale program, integrating relevant groups of stakeholders. The success of this ‘model’ relies in the existence of i) an active network of restoration organizations, ii) research institutions working collaboratively with these organizations, iii) restoration demands in the private and/or public sector, and iv) a reasonable society awareness on the need to conserve and restore native ecosystems for supporting human wellbeing. However, not all enabling factors may be operating in all the regions included in a large-scale restoration program. Different socio-ecological contexts may also result in different perspectives and expectations when restoring native ecosystems. Promoting the aforementioned enabling factors in different regions and harmonizing regional socio-ecological specificities into a common vision has been some of the major challenges faced by the AFRP. A total of 17 states with contrasting land area, population size and economic development level, as well as covering eight biogeographical zones, are located within the boundary of the Atlantic Forest biome. This high socio-ecological complexity prevents the use of a prescriptive approach (one-size fits all) to develop
P.H.S. Brancalion et al. / World Development Perspectives 3 (2016) 15–17
common solutions for all regions embraced by the biome. Rather, the regional specificities have to be fully considered in the development of customized solutions that better match the local socioecological context or, at least, for the adaptation of innovations developed in other contexts. However, the need for appropriate contextualization does not mean that the coalition cannot develop a common vision among its members, which is essential to maintain cohesion and to push collaborative work. In order to address this challenge, the AFRP was structured into 18 regional decentralized units, distributed across 10 states of the Atlantic Forest (Pinto et al., 2014). These units are responsible for promoting the AFRP in the region, mobilizing and engaging new members, influencing the regional restoration agenda and policies, fostering improvements in legislation, developing restoration methods, promoting capacity-building, and supporting restoration on the ground. Moreover, those units are responsible for identifying barriers and bring them to the coordination council to foster collaborative projects to overcome them more effectively. Because of the historical concentration of members in southeastern Brazil and, particularly, in São Paulo state, the AFRP have directed efforts towards a better geographical representation of members from other regions (Pinto et al., 2014). 2.4. Innovation foster changes The three governance innovations described above created a favorable atmosphere to support the main mission of the AFRP: to foster changes that lead to large-scale, high-quality restoration in the Atlantic Forest. The AFRP is a coalition underpin by an innovative governance structure, which changed the way restoration is being implemented in the Atlantic Forest. The organizational structure provided by the AFRP represents an alternative to the traditional approaches to promote restoration, going beyond a sectorial campaign from NGOs to a collaborative and representative movement of different sectors of the society working towards an ambitious target and collective benefits. The AFRP, as a governance innovation, has made an impact in many different areas affecting restoration, including influencing policy such as the revision of the Brazilian Forest Code and development of the National Plan for Recovering Native Vegetation (PLANAVEG). The AFRP also helped mobilized funding for restoration projects by working to support the Atlantic Forest Restoration Initiative financed by the National Development Bank (BNDES). Overall, the AFRP approach represents an important shift in the ‘‘traditional” and ‘‘reactive” approach adopted by restoration organizations, which were not working collaboratively to remove barriers and scale up restoration. This coalition is a true example of a flexible, bottom-up governance approach aiming at setting a more pro-active scenario to manage the pillars to achieve large scale restoration: policy influence; funding mobilization; multi-stakeholder engagement; knowledge generation, dissemination, and uptake; capacity building and technical assistance; and research technology development.
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3. Implications for policy and practice Most of the ongoing large-scale forest and landscape restoration programs have been conceived and promoted by international organizations, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration (GPFLR), World Resources Institute (WRI), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and other partners with the support from national governments and regional initiatives in the form of pledges or commitment to the Bonn Challenge (150 and 350 million hectares of degraded and deforested lands under restoration by 2020 and 2030, respectively). These programs have been a great step towards the development of a global restoration movement, leveraging the necessary incentives to transform millions of hectares of degraded lands into productive and functional landscape for the society. However, other important aspects are required to make this ambitious goal into reality, including decentralized governance structure and institutional arrangements, engagement of local stakeholders in the decision-making process, and scientific evidence on the benefits of restoration to landowners and communities. We hope that other restoration initiatives around the world will use the lessons-learned and experience from the governance innovation developed by the AFRP to achieve restoration at the scale and quality needed to face the ongoing loss of native ecosystems and the services they provide to humanity. Acknowledgements PHSB thanks the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) for a productivity grant (#304817/20155). PHSB and RRR thank the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) for financial support (#2013/50718-5). LP was supported by International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)Brazil. References Brancalion, P. H. S., Viani, R. A. G., Calmon, M., Carrascosa, H., & Rodrigues, R. R. (2013). How to organize a large-scale ecological restoration program? The framework developed by the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact in Brazil. Journal of Sustainable Forestry, 738–744. Calmon, Miguel, Brancalion, P. H. S., Paese, A., Aronson, J., Castro, P. S., Sabrina, C., et al. (2011). Emerging threats and opportunities for large-scale ecological restoration in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. Restoration Ecology, 19, 154–158. Melo, F. P. L., Pinto, S. R. R., Brancalion, P. H. S., Castro, P. S., Rodrigues, R. R., Aronson, J., et al. (2013). Priority setting for scaling-up tropical forest restoration projects: Early lessons from the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact. Environmental Science & Policy, 33, 395–404. Pinto, S., Melo, F., Tabarelli, M., Padovesi, A., Mesquita, A., Scaramuzza, C. A., et al. (2014). Governing and delivering a biome-wide restoration initiative: The case of Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact in Brazil. Forests, 5, 2212–2229. Rodrigues, R. R., Lima, R. A. F., Gandolfi, S., & Nave, A. G. (2009). On the restoration of high diversity forests: 30 years of experience in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Biological Conservation, 142, 1242–1255.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
World Development Perspectives journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wdp
Case report
Governance innovations from a multi-stakeholder coalition to implement large-scale Forest Restoration in Brazil Pedro H.S. Brancalion a,⇑, Severino Ribeiro Pinto b, Ludmila Pugliese c, Aurélio Padovezi d, Ricardo Ribeiro Rodrigues e, Miguel Calmon f, Helena Carrascosa g, Pedro Castro h, Beto Mesquita i a
Departament of Forest Sciences, ‘‘Luiz de Queiroz” College of Agriculture, University of São Paulo, Av. Pádua Dias 11, Piracicaba, SP 13418-260, Brazil Centro de Pesquisas Ambientais do Nordeste (Cepan), Rua Dom Pedro Henrique, 167 Recife, PE, Brazil Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact, Executive Secretariat, Brazil d World Resources Institute, Brazil e Departament of Biological Sciences, ‘‘Luiz de Queiroz” College of Agriculture, University of São Paulo, Av. Pádua Dias 11, Piracicaba, SP 13418-260, Brazil f Global Forest and Climate Change Programa (GFCCP), International Union for Conservation of Nature, Washington, DC, USA g Environmental Secretariat of São Paulo State, Brazil h Reserva da Biosfera da Mata Atlântica, Brazil i Conservation International, Brazil b c
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 21 October 2016 Revised 8 November 2016 Accepted 9 November 2016 Available online 16 November 2016
a b s t r a c t An effective large-scale forest landscape restoration program requires the mobilization and engagement of a diverse group of stakeholders and sectors. In the Atlantic Forest biome of Brazil, a coalition of more than 270 members represented by private sector, governments, NGOs and research organizations joined efforts to transform the way large-scale and high-quality restoration is governed and implemented. Ó 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Keywords: Atlantic Forest Environmental policies Large-scale restoration Stakeholder engagement
1. Introduction Forest and landscape restoration has been now promoted at an unprecedented scale, shifting from local projects implemented by conservation NGOs to multi-million-hectares programs supported and coordinated by major multilateral international organizations, governments, and the private sector interested in reverting degradation and minimizing the impacts of climate change at a planetary scale. A relevant challenge in this context is how to coordinate restoration efforts and remove the major barriers preventing their advance at the landscape level. Until recently topdown governance approaches were a common characteristic found in historical large-scale tree planting programs, including the use of slaves and emperor decisions to implement the Tijuca Forest in Brazil and government programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps of in EUA in 1930’s and more recent programs in South Korea and China. However, in spite of the relative success of these initiatives to increase tree cover in degraded landscapes, a
⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (P.H.S. Brancalion). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wdp.2016.11.003 2452-2929/Ó 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
top-down approach also had some failures and may not be viable in most countries where forest and landscape restoration is expected to be implemented in the coming years. This holds true in democratic countries, not ruled by a strong central government, in which society voluntary engagement, through a bottom-up approach, is essential to achieve success. Contemporary restoration programs have then to deal with agricultural and environmental policy, legislation, stakeholder mobilization and engagement, conflict mediation, markets, and innovation development. In other fields of human activity, similar challenges have been faced by the establishment of associations, summing forces of several organizations to push modifications in society structures to bring benefits to the sector they represent, including lobby. However, restoration is a multi-disciplinary field of activity composed by several different stakeholder groups and sectors, like subnational governments, agricultural and forestry companies, research institutions, NGOs, traditional communities, and landowners. This inherent characteristic of the restoration movement challenges the way restorationists pursue structural modifications in policies, markets and other fields of activity to make large-scale restoration viable, in which establishing associations to represent the restoration sector may not be enough.
16
P.H.S. Brancalion et al. / World Development Perspectives 3 (2016) 15–17
In the Atlantic Forest biome of Brazil, a coalition of more than 270 members represented by private sector, governments, NGOs and research organizations joined efforts to transform the way large-scale restoration is governed and implemented (Calmon et al., 2011; Melo et al., 2013). The Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact (AFRP) is a multi-stakeholder coalition established in 2009 with the aim to restore 15 million hectares of the Atlantic Forest by 2050, which will double native forest cover from approximately 15–30%. The motivations for achieving this goal include preventing loss of biodiversity in one of the world’s top five global hotspots for biodiversity conservation, provision of ecosystem services for over 60% of the Brazilian population living within the boundaries of this biome, generation of thousands of green jobs, increasing income, and compliance of the forest code (Brancalion, Viani, Calmon, Carrascosa, & Rodrigues, 2013). In this case study, we describe the innovations resulting from this approach to govern tropical forest landscape restoration at large scale. 2. Governance innovations Technological innovations are evidently crucial in restoration, in which obsolete and ineffective methods are still being used and have produced poor results (Rodrigues, Lima, Gandolfi, & Nave, 2009); however, restoration may obtain some of the greatest benefits by innovations in processes, changing the way stakeholders and sectors interact, negotiate, and deal with potential conflicts and synergies. We will present in this section four main innovations promoted by the AFRP to improve the way large-scale and high-quality restoration is governed. 2.1. Mobilization and engagement of a diverse group of stakeholders and sectors Before the AFRP, each organization or institution was trying to overcome complex and challenging barriers for its activities based on individual restoration efforts and without any coordination and collaboration with other organizations dealing with the same problems. Consequently, some fundamental challenges for the advance of restoration, like the lack of financial mechanisms and economic incentives to support restoration, could not be overcome and the foresight ideas representing solutions were spreading very slowly. For example, each organization working at the Atlantic Forest was using its own protocol or methodology to monitor its restoration projects and some of them were poorly designed. As a result, the comparison of restoration approaches among projects in the different regions and the identification of promising solutions for achieving large scale and high quality restoration in the Atlantic Forest was not possible. Moreover, scarce funds were in many cases wasted during the effort to gather information that was not relevant to assess restoration success and support adaptive management. A group of researchers and NGOs professionals then realized that the advanced stage of degradation in the Atlantic Forest was not reversed despite of the 20+ years of investment on restoration projects. They came to the conclusion that the only way to change the situation was to create a coalition with all stakeholders engaged on restoration to foster large-scale restoration in the biome. This coalition was then established as a collaborative network, minimizing competition and promoting synergistic solutions that would benefit all members and the ones that depend on the goods and services from the Atlantic Forest biome. Some key NGOs, governments, private companies, and research institutions were contacted in advance the establishment of the AFRP to ensure buy-in from a group of excellence with potential to legitimate the initiative and attract other members. This group included
individuals and organizations with the largest recognition and practical experience in conserving and restoring the Atlantic Forest biome, with decades of involvement in public policies development, programs implementation and knowledge generation. A ‘‘core” group was formed with the goal to develop the concept of the coalition and produce two products to be disseminated during the launching – a map of potential areas for restoration in the Atlantic Forest and a state of the art book with the best restoration knowledge and experiences. After two years the coalition was launched in April 2009 and since then many new organizations became members of the AFRP to shape the way restoration is being developed in the biome. Regarding the problem of using several monitoring protocols and methodologies, the AFRP promoted a collaborative effort with the participation of more than 70 experts to develop and implement a science-based monitoring protocol with a set of ecological, social, environmental, and management indicators. The protocol is being used by several members to assess restoration success and propose adaptive management. 2.2. Development of a collaborative platform for achieving restoration solutions Because the goal of the AFRP is to develop solutions to address restoration challenges and problems shared by most of its members, the solutions have to be generated collaboratively. One approach that the AFRP have been using successfully and costeffective is to use the knowledge and expertise of the members by establishing working groups to address the different thematic areas: science and technology, socio-economy, fund raising, policy, communication, gender, and remote sensing. For instance, the map on potential areas for restoration that include the areas where restoration is mandatory by the law and the areas with low opportunity costs (i.e., low productivity pasturelands with steep slopes), was produced by a team of GIS specialists from the member institutions (Melo et al., 2013). The working groups are composed of individuals from governments, private companies, NGOs, and researcher institutions and respond to the demands of the coordination council of the coalition. The ‘‘products” being developed by the working groups under the AFRP ‘‘umbrella” helped mainstream some of the products into the vision and mission of some organizations. 2.3. Harmonization of regional socio-ecological specificities into a common vision The innovation ‘model’ promoted by the AFRP helps to mainstream current small-scale, isolated restoration efforts into a large-scale program, integrating relevant groups of stakeholders. The success of this ‘model’ relies in the existence of i) an active network of restoration organizations, ii) research institutions working collaboratively with these organizations, iii) restoration demands in the private and/or public sector, and iv) a reasonable society awareness on the need to conserve and restore native ecosystems for supporting human wellbeing. However, not all enabling factors may be operating in all the regions included in a large-scale restoration program. Different socio-ecological contexts may also result in different perspectives and expectations when restoring native ecosystems. Promoting the aforementioned enabling factors in different regions and harmonizing regional socio-ecological specificities into a common vision has been some of the major challenges faced by the AFRP. A total of 17 states with contrasting land area, population size and economic development level, as well as covering eight biogeographical zones, are located within the boundary of the Atlantic Forest biome. This high socio-ecological complexity prevents the use of a prescriptive approach (one-size fits all) to develop
P.H.S. Brancalion et al. / World Development Perspectives 3 (2016) 15–17
common solutions for all regions embraced by the biome. Rather, the regional specificities have to be fully considered in the development of customized solutions that better match the local socioecological context or, at least, for the adaptation of innovations developed in other contexts. However, the need for appropriate contextualization does not mean that the coalition cannot develop a common vision among its members, which is essential to maintain cohesion and to push collaborative work. In order to address this challenge, the AFRP was structured into 18 regional decentralized units, distributed across 10 states of the Atlantic Forest (Pinto et al., 2014). These units are responsible for promoting the AFRP in the region, mobilizing and engaging new members, influencing the regional restoration agenda and policies, fostering improvements in legislation, developing restoration methods, promoting capacity-building, and supporting restoration on the ground. Moreover, those units are responsible for identifying barriers and bring them to the coordination council to foster collaborative projects to overcome them more effectively. Because of the historical concentration of members in southeastern Brazil and, particularly, in São Paulo state, the AFRP have directed efforts towards a better geographical representation of members from other regions (Pinto et al., 2014). 2.4. Innovation foster changes The three governance innovations described above created a favorable atmosphere to support the main mission of the AFRP: to foster changes that lead to large-scale, high-quality restoration in the Atlantic Forest. The AFRP is a coalition underpin by an innovative governance structure, which changed the way restoration is being implemented in the Atlantic Forest. The organizational structure provided by the AFRP represents an alternative to the traditional approaches to promote restoration, going beyond a sectorial campaign from NGOs to a collaborative and representative movement of different sectors of the society working towards an ambitious target and collective benefits. The AFRP, as a governance innovation, has made an impact in many different areas affecting restoration, including influencing policy such as the revision of the Brazilian Forest Code and development of the National Plan for Recovering Native Vegetation (PLANAVEG). The AFRP also helped mobilized funding for restoration projects by working to support the Atlantic Forest Restoration Initiative financed by the National Development Bank (BNDES). Overall, the AFRP approach represents an important shift in the ‘‘traditional” and ‘‘reactive” approach adopted by restoration organizations, which were not working collaboratively to remove barriers and scale up restoration. This coalition is a true example of a flexible, bottom-up governance approach aiming at setting a more pro-active scenario to manage the pillars to achieve large scale restoration: policy influence; funding mobilization; multi-stakeholder engagement; knowledge generation, dissemination, and uptake; capacity building and technical assistance; and research technology development.
17
3. Implications for policy and practice Most of the ongoing large-scale forest and landscape restoration programs have been conceived and promoted by international organizations, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration (GPFLR), World Resources Institute (WRI), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and other partners with the support from national governments and regional initiatives in the form of pledges or commitment to the Bonn Challenge (150 and 350 million hectares of degraded and deforested lands under restoration by 2020 and 2030, respectively). These programs have been a great step towards the development of a global restoration movement, leveraging the necessary incentives to transform millions of hectares of degraded lands into productive and functional landscape for the society. However, other important aspects are required to make this ambitious goal into reality, including decentralized governance structure and institutional arrangements, engagement of local stakeholders in the decision-making process, and scientific evidence on the benefits of restoration to landowners and communities. We hope that other restoration initiatives around the world will use the lessons-learned and experience from the governance innovation developed by the AFRP to achieve restoration at the scale and quality needed to face the ongoing loss of native ecosystems and the services they provide to humanity. Acknowledgements PHSB thanks the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) for a productivity grant (#304817/20155). PHSB and RRR thank the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) for financial support (#2013/50718-5). LP was supported by International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)Brazil. References Brancalion, P. H. S., Viani, R. A. G., Calmon, M., Carrascosa, H., & Rodrigues, R. R. (2013). How to organize a large-scale ecological restoration program? The framework developed by the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact in Brazil. Journal of Sustainable Forestry, 738–744. Calmon, Miguel, Brancalion, P. H. S., Paese, A., Aronson, J., Castro, P. S., Sabrina, C., et al. (2011). Emerging threats and opportunities for large-scale ecological restoration in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. Restoration Ecology, 19, 154–158. Melo, F. P. L., Pinto, S. R. R., Brancalion, P. H. S., Castro, P. S., Rodrigues, R. R., Aronson, J., et al. (2013). Priority setting for scaling-up tropical forest restoration projects: Early lessons from the Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact. Environmental Science & Policy, 33, 395–404. Pinto, S., Melo, F., Tabarelli, M., Padovesi, A., Mesquita, A., Scaramuzza, C. A., et al. (2014). Governing and delivering a biome-wide restoration initiative: The case of Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact in Brazil. Forests, 5, 2212–2229. Rodrigues, R. R., Lima, R. A. F., Gandolfi, S., & Nave, A. G. (2009). On the restoration of high diversity forests: 30 years of experience in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Biological Conservation, 142, 1242–1255.