The Evolution of Forest Restoration in Europe

Translating ambitious policy goals, such as those of the EU Nature Restoration Regulation, into tangible outcomes continues to pose significant social, financial, political and technical challenges, which are exacerbated by the uncertainty inherent to a changing climate and disturbance regimes. A pivotal and over-arching obstacle hindering current forest restoration ambitions lies in the insufficient documentation and dissemination of both successes and failures from past restoration initiatives. Hence, there is a clear need to capitalise upon past experiences in forest restoration to minimise mistakes and maximise the efficient use of resources in the future, especially considering the wealth of untapped knowledge generated by past initiatives.

This article, addresses this limitation by collecting and synthesising detailed information on the major practices and on the historical evolution of forest restoration in Europe to provide insights into the factors for successful (and unsuccessful) forest restoration. Specifically, we aim to: 1) examine the ecological, social, political and economic characteristics of the main forest restoration initiatives across Europe, 2) understand how the nature of these initiatives has evolved over time and what the main drivers of change have been, and 3) synthesise the lessons learned from past and present restoration practices to make recommendations for the implementation of the European Nature Restoration Law. This has been achieved by analysing and synthesising the detailed information provided by 32 forest restoration national experts from 18 European countries in the form of national narratives.