Planning Restoration at the Landscape Level for Integrated, Equitable, and Inclusive Climate Action

Overview

The Government of India has indicated its strong commitment to climate action, pledging to restore 26 million hectares (Mha) through its Bonn Challenge and Land Degradation Neutrality targets and to sequester 2.5 to 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (BtCO2 eq.) by expanding its forest and tree cover by 2030 as part of its nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the Paris Climate Agreement and the Net Zero Commitment by 2070. To achieve these targets, the first step is to identify the potential for restoration and estimate the environmental and development benefits that could follow.

To address this gap, the World Resources Institute (WRI) India, with data support from multiple partners, developed an interactive data visualization platform – Restoration Opportunities Atlas, which identifies priority regions in India (~100 Mha) for forest protection, mosaic restoration and wide-scale restoration that has the potential to sequester 3 to 4.3 billion tons of above-ground carbon by 2040.

The Atlas identifies Madhya Pradesh as one of the states with maximum potential for wide-scale and mosaic restoration (in the patchwork of land uses). WRI India undertook a deep dive landscape potential assessment in one district (Sidhi district) of Madhya Pradesh to showcase multiple benefits that can flow from restoration and investments in restoration.

Vision: Through systematically planning and implementing landscape restoration, the larger objective and vision is to showcase how poor and climate-vulnerable districts like Sidhi can put these areas on an inclusive and environmentally sustainable development path.