Restoration projects in India and Ethiopia in 2019, planted 220 million trees and 350 million trees, respectively. The successfulness of restoration projects depends on many factors including planting density, species selection, and site maintenance. However, all these factors present trade-offs between quality of restoration, area that can be restored, and cost of the restoration projects.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
LIMITS TO THE ABILITY OF CARBON FARMING PROJECTS TO DELIVER BENEFITS FOR THREATENED SPECIES. Engert & van Oosterzee. (2024). Nature Ecology & Evolution.
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Australia has proposed a legislated market for biodiversity based on an existing carbon credits scheme which generates Australian carbon credit units (ACCU) from land-based projects. This provides a unique opportunity to assess the potential for markets to benefit biodiversity. We assessed the extent to which projects under the ACCU scheme overlap potential threatened species habitat, compared that to overlap afforded by protected areas, and compared the ability of different project types to deliver potential benefits to species most impacted by habitat loss. Projects are primarily located in low-cost, marginal arid lands, a pattern that reflects that of the protected area estate. Projects are smaller and fewer in number in more productive lands close to human populations. These lands also overlap most threatened species habitat, hence those species most in need of habitat restoration are the least likely to have their habitat restored under the ACCU scheme. Projects, however, do overlap the geographic range of 32% of the 1,660 threatened species assessed, including for 275 species with <17% of their range in protected areas. Biodiversity markets must incentivize actions in areas of high biodiversity value underpinned by regulations that align with national priorities for biodiversity conservation.
ECONOMICS AND OPTICS INFLUENCE FUNDING FOR ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION IN A NATION-WIDE PROGRAM. Engert & Laurance. (2023). Environmental Research Letters.
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Australia is a world leader in habitat loss and species extinction, and for many species, ecological restoration will be necessary for continued persistence. Between 2014 and 2018, the Australian federal government allocated a substantial portion of funding for threatened species recovery to a nation-wide ecological restoration program called '20 Million Trees Land-care Program', which included a competitive grant round. By comparing successful and unsuccessful grant applications, we were able to identify factors associated with restoration funding allocation. We then assessed the Program's ability to provide benefits to threatened species by analyzing the overlap between restoration projects and threatened species habitat. We found that funding allocation under the 20 Million Trees Program was primarily driven by 'value for money' factors, specifically 'cost per tree' and number of trees planted. Additionally, projects were more likely to be funded if they mentioned threatened species in the description, but less likely to be funded if they actually overlapped with areas of high threatened species richness. Of the 1960 threatened species assessed, we found that only 9 received funding for restoration projects covering more than 1% of their range. Conversely, we found that utilizing alternative project selection schemes, such as alternative 'value for money' metrics or spatial planning methods, could have delivered better outcomes for some of the threatened species most impacted by habitat loss. Our results show that inopportune selection criteria for awarding of funding for ecological restoration can significantly reduce the benefits delivered by programs.
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