Resolving land tenure security is essential to deliver forest restoration

The paper addresses the gap between biophysical assessments of forest restoration potential and the socio-legal realities that determine where restoration is feasible and equitable. While forest landscape restoration (FLR) is promoted for climate mitigation, biodiversity, hydrological and livelihood benefits, influential global priority maps largely ignore governance and land tenure complexities, risking overestimation of achievable restoration. The authors posit that insecure or unrecognized land rights and weak rule of law can impede restoration at scale, shape local incentives to invest in restoration, and affect distributional outcomes. The study aims to quantify the overlap between high-priority restoration areas and weak governance/unrecognized tenure globally, and to examine in depth how tenure insecurity constrains FLR implementation in Madagascar, a country with ambitious FLR commitments under the Bonn Challenge and NDCs.

Prior work has highlighted restoration’s climate potential and broader ecosystem and livelihood benefits, but critiques point out that restoration priority mapping often erases local context, overlooks socio-economic constraints, and underestimates equity implications. Secure land rights are recognized as enabling conditions for restoration investments and sustainability. Scholars have called for integrating social data into restoration science and for tenure-responsive diagnostics to assess restoration opportunities. Evidence from multiple countries indicates that property rights reforms influence incentives for restoration, that restoration prioritized by low opportunity costs tends to target poorer regions with weaker governance, and that ignoring tenure can lead to social costs such as displacement, contested claims, and project failure. Experiences from REDD+ and cases in Asia, Africa, and Latin America underscore risks of ‘green grabbing’, the importance of participatory planning, and the role of tenure security over financial subsidies in sustaining local engagement.

The study used a mixed-methods approach combining (1) a global overlay analysis and (2) an in-depth country case study in Madagascar with qualitative fieldwork and coding.

1. Global overlay analysis:

• Restoration priority data: Strassburg et al. (2020) global priority areas for ecosystem restoration. For comparison, the text references overlaps with Brancalion et al. (2019) and Bastin et al. (2019).
• Governance data: World Governance Indicators (Rule of Law dimension), year 2020.
• Tenure data: Percentage of land used/held by Indigenous and Local Communities not formally recognized by government (LandMark platform).
• Spatial processing: Built a bivariate choropleth on a global hexagonal grid (Mollweide projection, 10 km side). Computed zonal statistics with MAJORITY for restoration priority class and MEAN for national-scale tenure and governance indicators.
• Classification: Restoration priority classified as none, intermediate (lower 80% of priority), and high (top 20%). Rule of law dichotomized at the median score (cutoff −0.107) into Low/High. Tenure unrecognition classified as High if >20% of national land is used/held by communities but not recognized; Low otherwise; NoData where unavailable. Combined categories to estimate co-occurrence.
• Madagascar-specific overlay: Applied same restoration priority classification; intersected with protected areas (Système des Aires Protégées de Madagascar, 2017) via zonal statistics to quantify shares within PAs; used national estimate of formally titled land (<15%) to conservatively infer the minimum share of high-priority restoration land that is untitled.

2. Madagascar qualitative case study:

• Stakeholder interviews: 52 semi-structured interviews with national stakeholders (government authorities, lawyers, donors, project proponents) from 30 organizations across all 22 regions (June–September 2020; mostly remote due to COVID-19).
• Community fieldwork: 28 focus groups (94 participants total) and 17 key-informant interviews with local community members at nine FLR sites in five regions (October–November 2020), covering both native forest restoration near protected areas and exotic woodlot plantings.
• Topics: Conceptualizations of FLR; activity characteristics; tenure perceptions; tenure interventions; land/tree ownership and access; conflicts; maintenance; legal interpretations; challenges; perceived benefits/costs.
• Ethics: Approved by Bangor University ethics committee (#COE-SE2020JJ02); informed consent; anonymization; small in-kind tokens for community participants; COVID safety protocols.
• Qualitative analysis: Interviews recorded and transcribed (except where not consented); thematic coding in NVivo 12.0. Iterative code development; second coder independently coded all responses; intercoder reliability assessed with alpha statistics; codes with alpha ≥0.66 retained; others reconciled by merging/refining. Analyses conducted in original languages; selected quotes translated into English.

• Global overlaps with weak governance/unrecognized tenure: • Of land in the top 20% of restoration potential (Strassburg et al. 2020), 78% lies in countries below the median Rule of Law score; 42% lies in countries where >20% of land used/held by Indigenous and Local Communities is not formally recognized. • For Brancalion et al.’s top 20% global restoration priorities, overlaps are 85% (low rule of law) and 43% (high unrecognized tenure). • Bastin et al.’s global tree restoration potential shows smaller overlaps: 57% (low rule of law) and 27% (high unrecognized tenure).
• Madagascar case: • 27 Mha (46% of national land area) identified as high potential for restoration by Strassburg et al.; about 10% of this high-potential land falls within protected areas. • No more than 15% of Madagascar’s land is formally titled; thus, at least 67% of high-potential restoration land must be on untitled land, much of it under customary claims; true proportion likely higher due to urban/cropland bias in titling. • Targeted FLR lands frequently overlap with lands customarily or informally claimed/used by local people, leading to conflicts, project scale-back, or abandonment. • Some proponents justify removal of occupants based on formal state ownership, incurring high social costs and jeopardizing long-term restoration effectiveness. • Tenure disputes are protracted; historical plantation areas (e.g., 1970s pine) face ongoing competing claims; court rulings have led to return of plantations to local legal owners. • Perceived benefits and incentives hinge on tenure: biodiversity-focused native forest restoration on state land offers non-consumptive services and potential carbon revenues where ‘carbon rights’ belong to the state; local communities question direct benefits and show limited motivation without secure rights. • Local preferences: communities often favor fast-growing exotic woodlots (e.g., Eucalyptus) on individually held plots due to short-term profits and greater control/security versus communal lands. • Fear of dispossession: some locals associate native restoration with stricter state control and potential disenfranchisement, leading to sabotage (burning, seedling destruction) in certain sites. • Tenure securitization as incentive: formalizing local rights to land/trees, or planting fast-growing trees to bolster claims, can increase willingness to invest; several successful projects combined technical support with processes to increase tenure security.
• Overall: Unresolved or contested tenure is a major barrier to scaling FLR in Madagascar; similar dynamics likely prevalent across tropical countries with weak governance and complex tenure.

The findings demonstrate that influential global restoration priority maps systematically overlap with countries characterized by weak rule of law and significant shares of unrecognized indigenous and community tenure. Because cost-minimization (low yields, low labor costs) guides prioritization, it inadvertently channels restoration toward settings where governance and tenure risks are highest, shifting costs onto marginalized populations and elevating risks of project failure and inequity. In Madagascar, these global patterns translate into concrete barriers: most high-priority areas are untitled and frequently under customary use; legal ambiguities and competing claims impede site selection, constrain upscaling, and provoke conflict. Local support depends on perceived benefits secured by tenure; where rights are unclear or benefits accrue primarily to the state or external actors (e.g., carbon), participation is fragile, and resistance can manifest in active sabotage. Conversely, strengthening tenure (through formalization or recognized user rights) enhances local incentives to invest, though it may introduce trade-offs with communal or ancestral rights. Thus, the study clarifies that ignoring tenure substantially overstates achievable restoration and underestimates true costs, especially social safeguards and conflict resolution. Addressing tenure is essential for durable ecological outcomes and equitable livelihood impacts, and lessons likely generalize across the tropics where similar governance and tenure challenges prevail.

This paper provides quantitative evidence that global restoration priority areas disproportionately occur in countries with weak rule of law and high levels of unrecognized indigenous/community tenure, and qualitative evidence from Madagascar that contested and insecure tenure is a central constraint on scaling forest landscape restoration. It argues that global estimates of restoration potential and costs are inflated when governance and tenure are ignored, risking harm to marginalized communities and project underperformance. Policy and practice should: (1) explicitly recognize and legally secure the rights of affected local people, including resolving conflicts between customary and statutory claims through participatory, accountable processes and free, prior, and informed consent; (2) anticipate and mitigate social costs via rigorous, independent social impact assessments and safeguards, and provide compensation or alternative livelihoods where needed; (3) navigate trade-offs by aligning restoration objectives (biodiversity, carbon, livelihoods) with tenure realities, potentially balancing native restoration with fast-growing species that support local tenure claims and income; and (4) ensure equitable inclusion of local communities in decision-making and design governance mechanisms for mutual accountability. Future research should develop spatially explicit tenure datasets, refine methods to integrate governance risks into restoration prioritization and costing, evaluate the long-term social and ecological outcomes of tenure-responsive restoration, and compare models of tenure formalization that avoid elite capture while supporting commons and ancestral rights.

• Global overlay limitations: Governance indicators are national-scale, and spatially explicit tenure datasets are lacking for many countries (including Madagascar), preventing precise, within-country overlap estimates. The >20% threshold for unrecognized tenure is a coarse national classification.
• Madagascar land titling estimate (<15%) is based on expert communication, and the 67% minimum untitled-share calculation is conservative; true proportions may differ spatially.
• Qualitative data are illustrative rather than statistically representative: stakeholder and community samples, while broad, cannot capture all contexts; most national interviews were remote due to COVID-19, potentially affecting depth/rapport.
• Confidentiality constraints preclude sharing transcripts; findings rely on anonymized thematic analysis with established, but not perfect, intercoder reliability (alpha ≥0.66 threshold).