Measuring, Reporting, and Verification of Forest Restoration

3.4.1 Regional Reference Condition Models
As discussed, restoration project success cannot be declared in the absence of clear project objectives, and clearly defined alternatives to evaluate against. The need for contrasts is why approaches that include a counterfactual and Reference Condition Model (RCM) represent the most reliable and rigorous approach to judge impact assessment. Nevertheless, sustaining long-term monitoring is often viewed as cost-prohibitive, and therefore developing the monitoring plan to also define a counterfactual and RCM is unlikely to be viable for most individual projects. For this reason, a critical step for national regulatory and funding entities that promote, permit and fund restoration projects is to support the monitoring needed to establish relevant counterfactual and reference standards that will in turn enable future restoration projects to deliver reliable monitoring plans and remain viable. Regulators are further able to create and maintain databases that use standardised protocols, and determine how to record decisions about where and how restoration is performed. These databases should also maintain and analyse the monitoring information collected by funded restoration projects to reinforce the collective strength of future analyses, and to establish adaptive management of the restoration program as a whole. There is ample experience of such an approach in Europe as part of the Water Framework Directive, which required the creation of typologies of rivers based on instream characteristics and biological communities that represent conditions unaffected by anthropogenic pressures (e.g. Pont et al. 2006). Centralised monitoring to define reference condition states would provide reassurance to external investors that restoration projects are equitably ranked and assessed to a high standard, but also greatly reduces monitoring burden for each project individually. Further efficiencies to support widespread restoration