This time last year, we were sharing the news with you that seven Model Forests and the Latin American Model Forest Network had taken action to restore Latin America’s forested landscapes through CAD$2.3M in targeted funding to  Model Forest partners in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Costa Rica and Guatemala to:

• Promote Gender Equality and empower women and girls in ecosystem restoration;
• Conduct diagnostics to identify degraded and post-fire areas for forest and landscape restoration;
• Establish post-fire Forest and Landscape Restoration implementation plans; and,
• Systematize results for future opportunities.

Given these results, we are pleased that RESTAURacción has received funding for two additional years to further this work.  The overarching objectives of RESTAURacción will continue, focusing on:

1. implementation of forest and landscape restoration plans;
2. advancing and incorporating women’s leadership and technical training; an
3. knowledge sharing on post-fire & degraded landscape ecosystem restoration.

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.

Key results to date from the first year of RESTAURacción include:

• installation of 15 weather/monitoring stations;
• establishment of 196 long-term forest monitoring plots;
• trained over 2400 people on topics including forest fire management and control; gender equity, leadership and governance; forest landscape restoration implementation and monitoring in degraded areas. Among the people trained, 47% were women and girls;
• provided 31 future restoration leaders with university scholarships to study forest landscape restoration and monitoring in degraded areas (87% of the scholarship holders are women);
• enabled results-on-the-ground through more than 100 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.

Want to hear more from local experts and agents of change?

Stay tuned over the next few months as we share photos, videos, interviews and stories from local landscapes.

RESTAURacción is funded by the Government of Canada through the International Model Forest Network (IMFN) Secretariat.