Tropical forest restoration improves myriad ecosystem services, and nowhere is the need more pressing than Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. The Atlantic Forest Biome houses 60% of Brazil’s people, produces >60% of Brazil’s GDP, and is >85% deforested. A consortium of actors set a goal of restoring 15 million hectares by 2050, but the path to this goal remains uncertain in the face of high population and competing land uses. In this context we ask: 1) are there feasible payment for reforestation approaches that benefit both forests and landowners? 2) does planting seedlings provide benefits that justify the extra expense relative to “passive” restoration?
To address these questions, we conducted three rounds of social and economic surveys with 2156 randomly-selected farmers in Bahia, Brazil. Starting in mid-2017 we offered a randomly-assigned restoration package (four treatments) to 770 of these farmers. The treatments crossed passive (land set aside) versus active restoration (native seedling planting), with labor only (land clearing and planting) versus labor plus cash payments for three years. Farmers chose where and how much land to restore(up to 0.5ha). Payments were priced based on the opportunity cost, amount of labor required, and the amount of land farmers restored.
Results/Conclusions
Many farmers are willing to restore forest, but reported a lack of knowledge, materials, or labor. Our pilot tests had a low uptake rate (<5%) if we did not offer to mark and clear the plots (even when the cash equivalent of labor was offered). When we offered to clear and plant, the experiment-wide acceptance rate increased to 40%. Acceptance was 8% higher when we offered ongoing payments than when we did not (44 vs 36%). Farmers in the active restoration treatment were offered double the payment of the passive to account for the additional labor of weeding around seedlings every four months. Acceptance in the active + cash treatment was slightly higher (46%) than in passive + cash (42%), but the cost or restoration was ~7x higher (1.5x if fencing was needed), and the installation time was ~3.5x longer. Moving forward we will monitor both forest regrowth and changes to farmer livelihoods associated with the different treatments (and in 190 control farms). However, given these cost differences and similar acceptance rates, if passive restoration yields even roughly similar forest regrowth and economic benefits it should be considered among the suite of options for large-scale reforestation in the Atlantic Forest.