Combining socioeconomic and biophysical data to identify people-centric restoration opportunities

Choksi, Pooja and Agrawal, Arun and Bialy, Ivan and Chaturvedi, Rohini and Davis, Kyle Frankel and Dhyani, Shalini and Fleischman, Forrest and Lechner, Jonas and Nagendra, Harini and Srininvasan, Veena and DeFries, Ruth (2023) Combining socioeconomic and biophysical data to identify people-centric restoration opportunities. npj Biodiversity. pp. 1-5.

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Abstract

Designing restoration projects requires integrating socio-economic and cultural needs of local stakeholders for enduring and just outcomes. Using India as a case study, we demonstrate a people-centric approach to help policymakers translate global restoration prioritization studies for application to a country-specific context and to identify different socio-environmental conditions restoration programs could consider when siting projects. Focusing, in particular, on poverty quantified by living standards and land tenure, we find that of the 579 districts considered here, 116 of the poorest districts have high biophysical restoration potential (upper 50th percentile of both factors). In most districts, the predominant land tenure is private, indicating an opportunity to focus on agri-pastoral restoration over carbon and forest-based restoration projects.

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