This new tool can drive India’s eco-restoration initiatives; here’s how

This new tool can drive India’s eco-restoration initiatives; here’s how

Subject :Environment

Section: Ecosystem

Context:

• Researchers have devised a tool that enables appropriate agroforestry and aids systematic ecosystem restoration.

About the tool- Diversity for Restoration (D4R):

• Diversity for Restoration (D4R) tool, devised by Bioversity International, was later modified by Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) to adapt it to the Indian context.
• The tool is developed with information on 237 socio-economically important native trees from the Western Ghats, and the numbers and geographies will increase over time.
• The tool will help improve the effectiveness of restoration programmes by providing manifold benefits to interested stakeholders while promoting sustainable development.
  • Non-profits, nature lovers and others working on plantations and increasing forest cover often face challenges in identifying the tree species to plant and their ecological benefits.
  • On many occasions, they also struggle to understand which plant species would best suit their given geographic location.
• The online tool precisely aims to help better decision-making and bring the best outcome for those plantation programmes.
• It could improve socio-ecological perspectives and help stakeholders in decision-making.
• The tool will help in:
  • Identifying species that match their restoration objectives.
  • Identifying species that can resist local stresses and adapt to evolving environmental conditions.
  • Pinpointing areas and regions to procure the seeds for the required species.
• The tool has information about 100 plant functional traits that have been considered to offer the best possible solution.
• Functional traits include information on economic and ecological uses from the tree species chosen for plantation.
• Information provided by the tool is:
  • the tool could identify windbreakers — the trees can act as a barrier against high winds.
  • The user can also know if the species offers better nitrogen fixing and whether it serves as a good pollinator for birds and bees.
  • Informs the user whether the tree species offers timber, fruit, manure or other commercial benefits.
  • Informs if the tree is resilient to physiological stresses such as extreme high or low temperatures, salinity or acidity tolerance in the soil among others.
• The tool is already being used in countries such as Malaysia, Ethiopia, Columbia, Peru, Burkina Faso, Cameroon etc.
• It provides a score of a particular tree species for plantations. This score helps determine and decide how well the species match the given site conditions and restoration objectives.
• The tool also provides varied recommendations that help in maximising the chances of restoration along with propagation information and monitoring suggestions.

UN Decade of Ecological Restoration:

• The Decade for Ecosystem Restoration was declared on 5 June 2021. It called for a biosphere restoration equal to the total land area of China. In addition, more stringent efforts towards climate mitigation as well were needed to preserve the ecological makeup of the earth.
• The Decade on Ecosystem was first proposed by El Salvador during the Bonn Challenge meeting in March 2018. The proposal put forward by El Salvador called for a restoration of about 350 million hectares of degraded ecosystems by 2030.

What is Ecological Restoration?

• The UN define ecosystem restoration as “the process of halting and reversing degradation, resulting in improved ecosystem services and recovered biodiversity”.
• In practice, a particular restoration can involve quite different transitions, depending on what best suits the local conditions.

What is Agroforestry?

• It is the practice of combining trees and farming; it demonstrates how food production and nature can co-exist.
• It is a resilient and future-proof sustainable agricultural method that could effectively mitigate the climate crisis.

According to FAO:

• Agroforestry is a collective name for land-use systems and technologies where woody perennials (trees, shrubs, palms, bamboo, etc.) are deliberately used on the same land-management units as crops and/or animals, in some form of spatial arrangement or temporal sequence.
• In agroforestry systems, there are both ecological and economical interactions between the different components.
• Agroforestry can also be defined as a dynamic, ecologically based, natural resource management system that, through the integration of trees on farms and in the agricultural landscape, diversifies and sustains production for increased social, economic, and environmental benefits for land users at all levels.
• In particular, agroforestry is crucial to smallholder farmers and other rural people because it can enhance their food supply, income, and health. Agroforestry systems are multifunctional systems that can provide a wide range of economic, sociocultural, and environmental benefits.