Beyond Land Restoration: Learning from Successful Smallholder Communities

Land degradation remains a pervasive threat to ecosystem functioning and rural livelihoods, placing land restoration high on global and national sustainable development agendas. Ethiopia exemplifies this challenge, where degradation—coupled with recurrent natural and human-induced shocks—continues to strain smallholder farming systems. Despite decades of government- and partner-supported restoration

efforts, community performance varies widely. Using a transdisciplinary approach, this study investigated 72 high-, medium-, and low-performing communities across the Ethiopian highlands to understand why some achieve sustained restoration success while others require additional support. The findings show that strong local leadership, high self-organization, and meaningful participation are decisive for effective and lasting restoration outcomes. Communities with these attributes not only restore degraded landscapes more successfully but also demonstrate greater capacity to adopt innovations and adapt their farming systems amid changing environmental and socioeconomic conditions. Overall, the study highlights that social and institutional strengths of local communities are important foundations for sustainable restoration of landscapes and resilient smallholder farming.