Thread by @ForrestFleisch1

I spent the weekend troubled by this editorial in Science. I agree with some of the main messages: Restoration has great potential to improve human well-being while caring for the planet. BUT I'm troubled by what isn't said. science.org/doi/full/10.11…

Restoration often involves difficult tradeoffs. The editorial makes it seem like its just win-win, but often land that is restored used to be agricultural land, or is used in some other way by people, or there are tradeoffs between ecological goals.

The editorial says that we can reconcile large-scale restoration of natural systems and food production, but it isn't clear to me how this statement is grounded in the current scientific literature.

The debate on "land sparing vs. land sharing" referenced here indicates that land sharing is probably necessary to achieve our societal goals (i.e. we have to work on conservation within and not just outside of agricultural land) science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

And this great new paper points out that there will often be "tragic" tradeoffs between goals. conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

The editorial ignores the distributional consequences of changing land use. There might be enough land to restore & grow food, but what if the land that is restored was the livelihood of a poor farmer?

Recent research shows that there is substantial overlap between areas targeted for restoration and areas where poor people live. nature.com/articles/s4155…

A poor farmer who is displaced to enable restoration may not have good alternatives (remember the "tragic" tradeoffs?). The history of conservation displacement shows us that this is likely to be a serious issue. arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.114…

Who gets to decide? The editorial suggests we use "proper planning and implementation" and follow the practice of "free, prior, and informed consent" which is common in international discussions. I suppose its better than nothing.

But allowing affected people to "consent" does *not* imply that they have any role in deciding whether their land is subject to change or not. It sounds like some restoration planner is going to decide where & what to restore, and then the local people will get to vote on it.

In practice, we know that processes like this cause great problems for people like the poor farmers I mentioned who might experience the negative impacts of restoration programs.

For example, studies of REDD+ have found significant human rights violations in spite of similar formally adopted standards and safeguards jstor.org/stable/resrep1…

I'm not really sure what "proper planning and implementation" mean, but even with the best of intentions we all know projects go awry. And we can't assume that people in power have the best intentions.

Maybe restoration is a way to raise money, deliver funding to supporters, or punish opponents. My political science training tells me that this, not altruistic or idealistic concerns, drives policy-making.

In short, the editorial implies that restoration will be a win-win for society, whereas we know that the truth is far more complicated. In fact, while the editorial says that knowledge of restoration has greatly advanced, this is really only true for the biophysical.

Restoration involves a transformation of human-environment relationships, yet we social scientists have not advanced very far in understanding how this can be accomplished - nor how to avoid negative outcomes like failed projects or displacement.

I suppose that the author might say that glossing over these significant knowledge gaps and risks is needed to promote something that is likely to bring net benefits, particularly in the context of a short editorial.

But when a product or program doesn't work as advertised, it turns people against it. We are already seeing this with conflict between tree planting enthusiasts who want to plant trees everywhere and advocates for open ecosystems.

Money spent on failed projects is gone. Lives destroyed can't easily be rebuilt. Personally, I'd rather work a bit slower and accomplish less but make sure I'm doing it right.

Maybe that's not compatible with the lofty goals of the UN decade of restoration. But if it is incompatible, I'm pretty worried about what the UN decade's impacts are going to be.