Planning for forest and landscape restoration (FLR) is an important step to optimize benefits and impacts from proposed interventions in line with local or national development objectives and minimize negative effects of land use management decisions. Engaging and bringing different stakeholders together across different sectors is needed to ensure to promote beneficial results socially and environmentally, thus making an efficient use of resources.

In this light, both the Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology (ROAM) and the WePlan-Forests platform are just two examples of tools you can use to guide your planning for FLR.

ROAM, developed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the World Resources Institute (WRI), provides a flexible and cost-effective framework for countries to rapidly identify priority areas and prioritize relevant intervention types for FLR at national or subnational levels following a participatory approach. The application of ROAM generates good context-specific knowledge relevant to understanding and addressing forest and land-use planning and management.

The WePlan-Forests platform is another valuable resource developed by the International Institute for Sustainability (IIS) and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). This decision support tool for spatial planning and implementation of tropical forest ecosystem restoration uses the best available data to support countries as they set or revise national and subnational targets on forest ecosystem restoration and plan for their implementation. Through the evaluation of a wide range of scenarios and targets, these analyses provide decision-makers with estimates of the climate mitigation and biodiversity benefits that may arise from various levels of forest restoration, and the opportunity and establishment costs associated with that restoration.

Watch our webinars below to see countries’ approaches in implementing ROAM for their respective project contexts and to learn more about the WePlan-Forests platform.