Landscape restoration: investing in local businesses

Landscape restoration is nothing new, local people have been shaping and restoring their environment to safeguard their lands and livelihoods for centuries. More recent, however, there is a global interest in investing in these landscapes with the purpose of restoring them. Landscape restoration refers to the restoration of landscape functions in terms of its productive function, its protective function, its social-cultural function or its aesthetic function. Landscape restoration increases the value of a landscape, both financial and non-financial (natural, social or cultural). So far, landscape restoration is not often seen as an private investment objective, as landscapes are often considered a public good, to be maintained and restored through public funding. Within this context, FNP collaborates with CDI in different landscape restoration initiatives in the Global South such as in South Africa, Indonesia or Ghana.

Research on landscape restoration can include, but are not limited to, the following:

• research on the institutional framework for landscape restoration
  
• research on the relation between local businesses and possibilities for restoration
• research on the multiple functions and values of landscapes
  
• research on social learning processes within landscape restoration initiatives