RESTAURacción: Wildfire Restoration in Latin America financed by Global Affairs Canada and led by the Canadian Forest Service through the International Model Forest Network Secretariat invested an initial CAD$2.318 million in 2021 in the Latin American Model Forest Network and seven Model Forests spread over six countries of Latin America (Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala and Peru). Those strong first year results unlocked an additional investment by Canada of CAD $1.423 million in Fiscal Year 2021/22 in the Latin American Model Forest Network, based out of Costa Rica, and in one Model Forest in one country of Latin America (Bolivia). A further CAD$2.96 million will be committed in Fiscal Year 2022/23, bringing Canada’s overall investment in RESTAURacción to over CAD$6 million.

In response to the numerous wildland fires that occurred in Latin America in 2019 and 2020, and delivering on Canada’s commitment at the 45th G7 Leaders’ Summit in Biarritz, France, RESTAURacción aims to:

• Advance women’s leadership in post-fire and degraded landscape ecosystem restoration;
• Plan and cost post-fire restoration; and
• Promote longer-term investments in sustainable land use.

RESTAURacción continues to make use of our long standing, mature and proven partnerships within the International Model Forest Network. With the same overarching objectives and goals as 2021, this second year and future years further focus financing actions on:

1. Advancing and incorporating women’s leadership and technical training in ecosystem restoration and landscape level governance decision-making;
2. Implementation of forest and landscape restoration plans via action research and advancement of natural, assisted, and active restoration of forests accompanied with monitoring systems and public awareness;
3. Playing a catalytic role in knowledge sharing on post-fire & degraded landscape ecosystem restoration and promoting associated longer-term investments in sustainable land use.

From January to March 2022, two Natural Resources Canada partners successfully accomplished the following:

• Over 200 hectares under the process of forest and landscape restoration;
• Established 30 long-term monitoring plots;
• Installed 4 weather and/or monitoring stations;
• Trained over 600 people to enhance their technical and scientific research capacities as well as access accurate information on gender gaps and their consequences/solutions (51% of people trained through RESTAURacción were women and girls);
• Provided 47 future restoration leaders with a scholarship, bursary or awards to pursue research related to forest landscape restoration in degraded areas (57 % of the scholarship holders are women); and
• Enabled results-on-the-ground through 23 seeds for change, including diagnostics, action plans, financial and restoration proposals, studies, protocols and monitoring reports.

RESTAURacción’s formula for success directly relates to the established governance platforms — the Model Forests — fostering close cooperation with local stakeholders, eager to contribute to the restoration of their landscapes. RESTAURacción results are scalable to all Model Forests that make up the Latin American Model Forest Network, and more broadly throughout the 60+ Model Forests in 30+ countries of the International Model Forest Network.

RESTAURacción is about putting forest restoration into action. Keeping with Canada’s response to natural disasters, ambitious commitments to climate action and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, RESTAURacción has engaged local stakeholders and created synergies with national and sub-national government political commitments such as forest and landscape restoration (FLR) targets as part of the Bonn Challenge, the 20×20 Initiative, and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021–2030.

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