A series of three new online courses have been developed to introduce the key concepts of forest and landscape restoration (FLR) to practitioners and to equip them with the capacity to design, implement, monitor and analyze financial needs and opportunities for FLR.   

Introduction to forest and landscape restoration

Degradation of forests and landscapes impacts the global climate, and also the food security and livelihoods of communities. Forest and landscape restoration (FLR) is a process which brings stakeholders together to create healthy, resilient and productive landscapes and meet national, regional and global commitments.​ This course has been developed to introduce the key concepts and process of forest and landscape restoration.

In this course, you will learn about:  

• The importance of FLR and its key concepts​.
• The benefits of FLR and how it helps countries to achieve their national, regional and global commitments​. 
• The three key steps of the FLR process.​ 
• The importance of engaging stakeholders in all steps of FLR and negotiating between potentially conflicting objectives.​ 
• The various considerations when implementing, managing and monitoring FLR​. 
• Barriers and success factors for FLR.

The course can be accessed here. 

Sustainable financing of Forest and Landscape Restoration

To meet countries’ national commitments to restoring degraded landscapes, adequate public and private investments are needed to support the different steps of the FLR cycle. Financing sources are more efficient when used in a coordinated way.​ This course has been developed to improve the awareness and capacities of practitioners and policy makers to analyse FLR financial needs and opportunities, so that they are more effective at securing and coordinating funding for FLR interventions.

In this course, you will learn about: 

• What monitoring is, its principles and why it is important for FLR.
• How to identify restoration goal-themes and sub themes.
• Choosing appropriate indicators to meet restoration objectives.
• Designing a restoration monitoring framework, including considerations of trade-offs and synergies, land uses and constraints. 
• Filtering indicators, baseline and targets. 
• Deciding which data should be collected. 
• Ranking indicators and building a restoration index.

The course can be accessed here.

Monitoring forest and landscape restoration

As countries work to meet their national commitments to restoring degraded landscapes, it is important that all FLR interventions have manageable monitoring systems in place, to assess progress towards specific goals, support adaptive management and ensure transparency. This course has been developed to equip practitioners with the capacity to design, plan and implement monitoring systems for FLR interventions.

In this course, you will learn about:

• The costs and benefits of FLR and related financing needs​ 
• What makes a landscape ‘investment ready’​ 
• The different types of FLR investors and their priorities​ 
• The barriers to accessing FLR investment and creating an enabling environment​ 
• Financial and market-based mechanisms for financing FLR interventions ​ 
• The importance of coordinating different investment types and financing mechanisms to support FLR​ 
• The importance of communication and building and strengthening alliances

The course can be accessed here.