Last week, the CTFC welcomed Dr. Forrest Fleishman, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, for a seminar on the often-overlooked social dimensions of ecological restoration. Drawing on his research in India and Malawi, Dr. Fleishman makes a compelling case for integrating social science into the heart of restoration planning.
We often think of ecological restoration as being about plants and animals—but human decisions are behind it. What are the risks of ignoring the social side? Why is it important to consider people when we talk about restoring nature?
Ecological restoration is ultimately a human activity—it’s people who degrade ecosystems, and people who must repair them. Ignoring the social dimensions can lead to two major problems. First, restoration can fail entirely—for example, if trees are planted without accounting for grazing animals, they may be eaten before they can grow. Second, restoration can succeed ecologically but still harm local communities, such as when former grazing lands are reforested without providing alternatives, reducing access to vital resources. By not engaging with how people use, value, and interact with landscapes, we risk overlooking key drivers of degradation and missing opportunities to create restoration strategies that are sustainable and equitable. Including social considerations means asking: who benefits, who bears the costs, and who gets to decide? Without these questions, restoration might look successful on paper but fail in practice.
We’d love to hear what restoration looks like in practice, what works, what doesn’t, and why, in these very different contexts. What have you learned from working on the ground in places like Malawi and India?
Restoration takes many forms depending on the context: it can mean planting trees, supporting natural forest regeneration, or changing agricultural practices. What I’ve seen in Malawi and India is that “restoration” is often used to describe very different activities—sometimes with very different ecological and social implications. A key insight from my research is that many restoration projects fail to deliver on their promises because they are poorly designed or based on narrow definitions of success. In India, for example, many government-led projects focused on technical goals like increasing forest cover but didn’t consider local livelihoods or ecosystem functionality. These failures revealed a need to better understand how social, political, and institutional factors shape outcomes. What works is restoration that is adapted to local conditions, shaped by local knowledge, and inclusive of the people who depend on the land. Without this, restoration can easily become a box-ticking exercise that does more harm than good.
In your research in India, you mention some projects that actually worsened both social and environmental outcomes. What went wrong, and how can that be avoided?
In India, one common approach was to plant pine trees in degraded areas to quickly boost forest cover. Pines are native but problematic when planted as monocultures—they’re not useful for local livelihoods, they reduce biodiversity, increase fire risk, and encourage invasive species. These projects looked good on paper but created ecosystems that were neither ecologically rich nor socially valuable. What went wrong was the lack of community consultation and a narrow focus on tree cover as a metric of success. An alternative would have been to restore diverse native forests, like those dominated by oaks, which are harder to regenerate but offer more benefits. To avoid harm, we must start with community needs, consider long-term sustainability, and design projects that balance ecological goals with social well-being. Local participation may slow the process, but it leads to more resilient, accepted, and effective outcomes that can adapt to uncertain futures.
Are there lessons from your research that we should keep in mind when planning restoration projects in our region?
Yes—one key lesson is to avoid centralized, one-size-fits-all approaches. Restoration needs to be context-specific and reflect the values, needs, and knowledge of local communities. In Catalonia, this could mean supporting very different strategies even within short distances—for example, restoring forest dynamics in one area to enhance biodiversity and tourism, while promoting traditional chestnut agroforestry in another to support local economies and food systems. Uniform strategies may be easier to implement administratively, but they often miss opportunities for local innovation and can create mismatches between goals and real-world conditions. Local participation not only improves outcomes but fosters ownership and long-term stewardship. Restoration should empower communities to shape their own landscapes. Flexibility, diversity, and responsiveness to place-based knowledge are crucial. Restoration is not just ecological, cultural, or social, and it should be approached with that complexity in mind.
Can citizen involvement help achieve better outcomes? And how can communities be meaningfully included in restoration efforts? What role can local communities play in making restoration fairer and more effective?
Yes, meaningful and sustained community participation leads to better outcomes. It’s not enough to invite people to a meeting; real inclusion means involving them from the start, in both planning and long-term management. In our research, successful projects often emerged where communities had decision-making power. In India, where land is typically state-owned, participatory governance was key to avoiding top-down, ineffective programs. In contrast, in Spain, where land is mostly private, involving citizens can be more complicated—especially when private land use has broader social or ecological impacts. This raises questions about land rights, responsibilities, and regulation. Communities should be empowered to demand inclusion, not just be invited. Participation also brings diverse knowledge systems into the process and helps ensure that restoration doesn’t harm vulnerable groups. Ultimately, restoration becomes fairer and more effective when those most affected by landscape change have the right and the power to shape its direction.
We often evaluate the success of the restoration in ecological terms. What social indicators should a well-designed project consider?
Social indicators are still underdeveloped in restoration science, but some important ones are emerging. First, we should assess whether local people, especially those most affected, were meaningfully involved in decision-making. Second, we need to monitor whether any groups have been harmed, particularly vulnerable or marginalized populations such as women or subsistence users. Did restoration reduce access to essential resources like firewood or grazing land? Were traditional practices displaced? Success should also be measured in terms of improvements in people’s well-being—economic, social, and health-related. These indicators can be gathered through surveys, interviews, or analysis of existing socio-economic data. At larger scales, changes in employment, income, or public health data could signal broader impacts. Restoration that ignores social outcomes risks undermining support or creating hidden costs. By integrating both ecological and social metrics, we can better understand the full impact of our actions and design restoration that is not only effective, but just and lasting.
Last modified: 29 July 2025
