Guidelines for the Development of Upscaling Plans
This guideline aims to stimulate forest habitat restoration activity beyond demonstrations and pilots. It provides guidance and good practice examples for use during the planning, scoping, implementing and review stages of demonstration and pilot projects.
Introduction
The guideline is aimed to provide advice to those developing or running pilot or demonstration projects to ensure that their work encourages greater restoration activity beyond their project time. We stress that the consideration of upscaling should be a continuous process from the start of a pilot project through to its conclusion. The guide covers the processes that should be used to maximise the likelihood of upscaling and is complimented with a template for recording the output of those processes. It provides a comprehensive overview for upscaling forest restoration efforts by transitioning from small-scale demonstration or pilot projects to larger, coordinated restoration initiatives. It emphasizes that every demonstration or pilot project should always bear in mind the wider application of its learning. This should start already with the initial planning of the project and be continued through the concluding and reporting stages.
One way to capture this learning is through the development of a ‘route-map for upscaling forest restoration’. A route-map is defined as a strategic document that gathers insights and lessons learned from small-scale demonstration projects and translates them into a pathway for regional or national restoration programs. Hence, it is a bottom-up approach that connects practical learning that supports large scale restoration in line with global, EU and national restoration initiatives.
The guide is primarily designed for managers and coordinators of forest restoration pilot projects. It provides practical advice and a framework for capturing lessons learned from local restoration efforts, thereby enabling their integration into broader, regional or national restoration strategies. The process for developing a route-map should address five basic questions:
- Why is large scale forest restoration needed? This includes identifying an overarching restoration goal and clearly explaining the underlying needs and motivation for restoration. It should also include identifying synergies and conflicts with other restoration goals.
- Who are the key actors for upscaling? Effective upscaling requires engaging diverse groups of actors, stakeholders, central for transferring the knowledge gained from the pilot project. This includes landowners, policy makers, forest value chain actors, civil society and knowledge providers.
- Where should restoration be prioritized? When addressing restoration at scale new question arise relating to landowners, jurisdiction, ecological conditions that require spatial planning.
- What are the key barriers to address? Barriers arise in several dimensions and where a so called ‘PESTEL’ analysis that explores issues across political, economic, social, technical, environmental and legal dimensions is a helpful approach.
- What are the project’s recommendations for how to address the barriers to upscaling restoration? As a final output, the route-map should provide guidance, advice and recommendations
2. Strategic approach to upscaling
As a general principle to emerge from our work is that consideration of upscaling should be a continuous process from the start of a pilot project through to its conclusion. Without this, the design of the pilot or demonstration site may not tackle the right issues or reach the right audience.
4. Developing recommendations
Based on your strategical analysis and how you foresee that barriers can be addressed the concluding part of your upscaling route map should provide your guidance, advice and recommendations on how to address the key barriers identified in the PESTEL analysis based on your knowledge and experience.