Collaborate and scale up
We cannot do this alone. In order to grow our movement and scale our impact, we engage with companies of all size to co-fund restoration projects also with public matching grants.
We collaborate with scientists and with other NGO's to achieve the biggest impact.
Restore
We initiate or join forest restoration projects with following objectives: scalability (we want to plant millions of trees every year), quality (our aim is to co-develop a world standard for forest landscape restoration ) and impact (the new forest must have more value standing than felled).
What does it mean to ‘restore’ forest landscapes?
It's not about the trees, it's about the overall result for the environment and for the people who live there. Our objective when working on a project is to regain ecological integrity and enhance human well-being in a deforested or degraded forest. We restore an area from a multifunctional perspective, combining natural resources management with environmental and livelihood solutions (providing for example energy efficient woodstoves or beehives to reduce pressure on the forest).
WeForest's restoration principles.
- 1. Intervention
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We identify and intervene in areas where there is growing threat of further degradation
- 2. Tropical focus
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Our geographical focus is the tropics where forests and trees are more efficient at cooling temperatures through evapotranspiration and cloud reflectivity.
- 3. Root cause
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Identify the root causes of forest degradation and work towards developing alternatives.
- 4. Community engagement
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We work with local communities to give them ownership, leverage local knowledge and enhance environmental stewardship capacity.
- 5. Woman empowerment
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The empowerment of women is central to most of our projects whether through training delivery, women-led micro-enterprises such as nurseries or other economic opportunities.
- 6. Ecosystem services
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Improved ecosystem services are an essential outcome of all projects: such as a more sustainable supply of clean water, reduced erosion, lower landslide risk, flood/drought mitigation.
- 7. Livelihood improvement
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We look to diversify income streams to make community livelihoods more resilient such as increasing the supply of forest-related products (medicines, foods, other resources), monetary income from alternative sources (direct employment in restoration activities, ecotourism), fostering and facilitating entrepreneurship.
- 8. Inclusiveness
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We welcome multi-stakeholder partnerships to achieve restoration goals.
- 9. Collaboration
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We aim to advance the FLR agenda by developing collaborations with the scientific community, think-tanks, intergovernmental institutions and not-for-profit organisations in ways that create shared value.
- 10. Context-driven
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There is no 'one model fits all': we have a context-driven approach directly linked to the needs of the area and stakeholders involved.
WeForest's restoration approaches
The intensive planting of a large number of tree species (pioneer and climax species) for the purpose of ecological restoration, suitable to recover degraded areas that can be developed as corridors between forest fragments. The approach incorporates a variety of planting schemes that take into account the typical changes we observe in forest communities over time e.g. species composition will change over time as some species become more prominent while others may fade out of existence.
The integration of trees on farms and in the agricultural landscape in ways that sustain productive, profitable and healthy land use systems.
A restoration method to enhance the establishment of forests by protecting and nurturing wild seedlings present in the area. ANR aims to accelerate natural successional processes by removing or reducing barriers to natural forest regeneration such as soil degradation, competition with weedy species, and recurring disturbances (from, for example, grazing animals). It may also include enrichment planting (enhancing the density of desired tree species) and transplanting of saplings.
Named after Italian Dr Venanzio Vallerani’s work in China in the year 2000, the Vallerani method is a mechanised approach to large-scale reforestation of degraded drylands. It utilises the Delfino plough to create microbasins (shallow, sickle-shaped depressions in the land) that optimise the use of rainwater and capture of organic matter. The direct seeding of tree and non-woody species into the basins enables growth during the rainy season.
We plant forests by employing the following methods:
Direct seed sowing
Direct planting of seedlings grown in nurseries
Tree transplanting
Protection of wild saplings
Measure
We measure the impact of our reforestation activities with a broad set of Key Performance Indicators. Every contribution is also assigned a specific polygon with GPS points on a map.
Each of our projects have different restoration strategies according to the context and objectives. We establish a management plan, a monitoring and evaluation framework and a clear reporting structure.
We measure project outcomes by undertaking a baseline assessment and track our progress using KPIs set on a project by project basis. We are working to quantitatively and qualitatively assess the long-term ecological as well as socio-economic benefits that we are bringing to the communities themselves and how we are changing peoples' lives.
We provide real-time updates on our project progress as well as an annual overview report to our sponsors and donors.
Research on forests
We share knowledge on the role forests play in mitigating, and adapting to Climate Change.
