A recent story in The Scientist describes my research on forest policy - and some of its unintended consequences for non-forest ecosystems. You can read the whole story here.
“The people who have decision-making authority over ecosystems—government officials and international donors—have been very focused on forests,” says Fleischman. “Other ecosystems are [often viewed as] ‘Oh, that’s something we can convert to forest,’ or ‘That’s degraded, and something we can use for agriculture.’”
The organizations that contributed to the creation of the interactive forest-restoration map—the Washington, DC–based World Resources Institute (WRI); the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), headquartered in Gland, Switzerland; and the University of Maryland—“mean well, 100 percent,” Fleischman says. “But there’s a bit of a disconnect between what [NGOs are promoting and what] ecologists are telling us we should be doing, which is restoring ecosystems as opposed to planting trees.”