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This guide addresses FLR implementation as a whole but with a view toward climate change mitigation and adaptation; only if the landscape is changing and FLR is successful will climate benefits materialise. Implementing FLR in practice goes beyond generalized concepts. Implementing FLR generally requires a group of stakeholders rather than being the responsibility of a single stakeholder. We intend this guide to be a training resource for FLR facilitators who have a broad approach to land management. The guide is also aimed at anyone who implements FLR in a specific country or local context. Thus, policymakers and practitioners considering FLR commitments can use this guide to gain an understanding of the complexities of actual implementation.

There is renewed interest in the use of native tree species in ecosystem restoration for their biodiversity benefits. Growing native tree species in production systems (e.g. plantation forests and subsistence agriculture) can also ensure landscape functionality and support for human livelihoods. Achieving these full benefits requires consideration of genetic aspects that are often neglected, such as suitability of germplasm to the site, quality and quantity of the genetic pool used and regeneration potential. Understanding the extent and nature of gene flow across fragmented agro-ecosystems is also crucial to successful ecosystem restoration. We review the role of genetic considerations in a wide range of ecosystem restoration activities involving trees and evaluate how different approaches take, or could take, genetic aspects into account, leading towards the identification and selection of the most appropriate methods.

A component of the SWAMP toolbox that discusses how wetlands, and in particular mangroves, fit into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the development of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) programs.

Inclusion of improved forest management as a way to enhance carbon sinks in the Copenhagen Accord of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (December 2009) suggests that forest restoration will play a role in global climate change mitigation under the post-Kyoto agreement. Although discussions about restoration strategies often pertain solely to severely degraded tropical forests and invoke only the enrichment planting option, different approaches to restoration are needed to counter the full range of degrees of degradation. We propose approaches for restoration of forests that range from being slightly to severely degraded. Our methods start with ceasing the causes of degradation and letting forests regenerate on their own, progress through active management of natural regeneration in degraded areas to accelerate tree regeneration and growth, and finally include the stage of degradation at which re-planting is necessary. We argue that when the appropriate techniques are employed, forest restoration is cost-effective relative to conventional planting, provides abundant social and ecological co-benefits, and results in the sequestration of substantial amounts of carbon. For forest restoration efforts to succeed, a supportive post-Kyoto agreement is needed as well as appropriate national policies, institutional arrangements, and local participation.

The project of 'Bridging restoration and multi-functionality in degraded forest landscape of Eastern Africa and Indian Ocean Islands' (FOREAIM) will provide tools and management strategies to enable restoration of degraded humid forest ecosystems by advancing our understanding of the mechanisms of forest degradation/restoration and their potential impacts on local populations, policy makers, governments and markets. We have chosen a novel, widely multidisciplinary, integrated research approach that couples biological/biophysical and socio-economic and policy generating variables, the results of which will form the basis for recommendations and guidelines for sustainable forest restoration and management. Our approach will put in place practical rules and recommendations to arrest degradation, restore tropical forests, create an enabling environment, ensure sustainability, create equitable opportunities to improve stakeholder livelihoods and encourage development by generating "high value" exportable natural commodities that are exclusively available from tropical forests. This start up meeting specified objectives and functioning of the project. My specific task was to lead the workshops concerning the team of workpackage 1, whose objectives are to assess stakeholders forest and tree management practices and uses. In this report, we deliver the Workpackagel global strategy.