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The Restoration Diagnostic is a structured method for determining the status of enabling conditions within a landscape being considered for restoration and for designing the requisite policies, practices, and measures needed for successful restoration. The Diagnostic was developed as part of the Restoration Opportunities Assessment Methodology (ROAM) by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Restoring Nature's Capital proposes an action agenda for business, governments, and civil society to reverse ecosystem degradation. The authors contend that governance---who makes decisions, how they are made, and with what information---is at the heart of sustaining healthy ecosystems. With this as their fundamental tenet, the authors present an action agenda for reversing degradation of ecosystems and sustaining their capacity to provide vital services for generations to come. The action agenda identifies how decisions about development projects and investments can be made in ways that lead to healthy ecosystem services. These decisions, made by local and national governments, corporations, and international financial institutions, involve billions of dollars, affect huge swaths of land and water, and affect millions of people.

This case study examines Vietnam’s efforts to use mangroves as an adaptation approach, and illustrates how governance plays a crucial role in the success of such actions. Large-scale mangrove restoration and rehabilitation has been institutionalized as key adaptation interventions in Vietnam, with very different results in the north and south. Vietnam’s experience suggests that adaptation approaches with a single objective – such as protecting coastal infrastructure from sea level rise – can lead to conflicts of interest that hinder implementation, especially when local communities are not involved. Incorporating adaptation within a comprehensive development planning process has had greater success in providing benefits to all stakeholders.

This paper describes an approach towards integrating forest protection, management and restoration at a landscape scale. It has been developed by the WWF Forests for Life programme as a contribution to the organisation’s global conservation programme, drawing in part on a landscape approach developed jointly with partners including IUCN The World Conservation Union and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. While written mainly for a WWF audience, we hope that the paper will be of interest to other NGOs, development agencies and governments. Part 2 outlines the context within which WWF is applying these ideas; the rest of the document describes the overall approach, which could be applied in other situations.

EFN(Education for Nature Program)’s Reforestation Grant Program focuses on supporting communities in regaining ecological integrity and enhancing human wellbeing in deforested and degraded landscapes through forest restoration. EFN is looking for organizations that will use this workshop opportunity to connect corridors, create buffer zones, improve degraded lands, restore watersheds, and expand forest cover while also allowing local stakeholders to connect with nature and become a vested part of a larger conservation program.