• The centre has launched a flagship project on enhancing capacity on forest landscape restoration (FLR) and Bonn Challenge in India, through a pilot phase of 3.5 years implemented in the States of Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Nagaland and Karnataka.
• At the UNFCC Conference of the Parties (COP) 2015 in Paris, India also joined the voluntary Bonn Challenge pledge to bring into restoration 13 million hectares of degraded and deforested land by the year 2020, and additional 8 million hectares by 2030. India’s pledge is one of the largest in Asia.

About Forest Landscape restoration:

• Forest landscape restoration (FLR) is the ongoing process of regaining ecological functionality and enhancing human well-being across deforested or degraded forest landscapes. FLR is more than just planting trees – it is restoring a whole landscape to meet present and future needs and to offer multiple benefits and land uses over time.

It is about:

• Forests because it involves increasing the number and/or health of trees in an area;
• Landscapes because it involves entire watersheds, jurisdictions, or even countries in which many land uses interact; and
• Restoration because it involves bringing back the biological productivity of an area in order to achieve any number of benefits for people and the planet.
• It is long-term because it requires a multi-year vision of the ecological functions and benefits to human well-being that restoration will produce although tangible deliverables such as jobs, income and carbon sequestration begin to flow right away.

Principles of FLR

• Successful FLR is forward-looking and dynamic, focussing on strengthening the resilience of landscapes and creating future options to adjust and further optimise ecosystem goods and services as societal needs change or new challenges arise. It integrates a number of guiding principles, including:
• Focus on landscapes – FLR takes place within and across entire landscapes, not individual sites, representing mosaics of interacting land uses and management practices under various tenure and governance systems. It is at this scale that ecological, social and economic priorities can be balanced
• Maintain and enhance natural ecosystems within landscapes – FLR does not lead to the conversion or destruction of natural forests or other ecosystems. It enhances the conservation, recovery, and sustainable management of forests and other ecosystems.
• Engage stakeholders and support participatory governance  – FLR actively engages stakeholders at different scales, including vulnerable groups, in planning and decision making regarding landuse, restoration goals and strategies, implementation methods, benefit sharing, monitoring and review processes.
• Tailor to the local context using a variety of approaches – FLR uses a variety of approaches that are adapted to the local social, cultural, economic and ecological values, needs, and landscape history. It draws on latest science and best practice, and traditional and indigenous knowledge, and applies that information in the context of local capacities and existing or new governance structures.
• Restore multiple functions for multiple benefits – FLR interventions aim to restore multiple ecological, social and economic functions across a landscape and generate a range of ecosystem goods and services that benefit multiple stakeholder groups.