During the recent Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) in London, IUCN and several key partners explored some of the barriers to, and solutions for, mobilising increased private sector investment into forest landscape restoration (FLR) interventions.
Photo: IUCN GFCCP
With investment at the top of the agenda at the GLF, a special session from IUCN and partners used investment cases from Brazil, Rwanda and Tanzania to highlight a broad range of investment perspectives from businesses, governments, NGOs and academia. The cases touched on common investment barriers and made inferences about which factors lead to success.
During the session, over 80 participants held a lively discussion around investing in FLR. A general agreement on some key barriers that need to be addressed resulted. Among the key barriers are:
- limited knowledge of how to achieve scale through feasible investments supported by enabling public funding;
- limited awareness and information exchange between investors and investees;
- limited commercially viable models for FLR, including poor understanding of how to generate return on investment;
- limited access to financial mechanisms for smallholders and restoration practitioners;
- limited market value for public goods such as carbon, water and biodiversity; and
- scientific knowledge gaps around restoring landscapes, including the restoration value of different species.
The participants agreed that we need to move from theory to practice by developing investment cases and models on the ground. Some key elements to making this happen were identified as:
- defining further public and private sector roles, including clarity around how to make them complementary;
- developing investment packages within large scale restoration landscapes - (What works? What mix of products and services generates returns? What does the financial model for investing in landscapes look like?);
- strengthening the role of organisations that can bridge the gap between business and communities; and
- building transparency and accountability mechanisms for boosting investor confidence.
IUCN will continue to engage by bringing investors and investees closer together, highlighting more examples from our work in Brazil, Ghana, Guatemala and Mexico, and continuing to work with all stakeholders to facilitate enabling investments in countries such as Rwanda - who have a national commitment to restore their forest landscapes. As the case for investing in FLR becomes stronger, the barriers to investment inevitably break down. More forest-related investment stories will be shared in the coming weeks.
