ABSTRACT

This chapter considers how a lack of integration across sectors, scales, disciplines, values and knowledge systems could inhibit progress towards effective forest landscape restoration (FLR). The discussion draws on evidence regarding the shortfalls of approaching sustainable forest management through sectoral approaches. We focus in particular on the challenges that impact the management and governance of FLR interventions and those which confound and constrain the knowledge creation and the intellectual backdrop informing interventions and their implementation. We give special attention to the tropics, as a site of rapid land use change involving forest loss and degradation and a geography targeted by the FLR agenda. We draw on our research experience from across the tropics and provide an illustrative case study from Indonesia’s peatland management. Our analysis suggests that integration across sectors, spatial scales, knowledge systems and disciplines will be central to aligning and enabling the FLR agenda. We highlight the need to incorporate lessons learned in the current and emergent FLR agenda to avert risks associated with an ahistorical and apolitical technocratic approach to the challenges of forest and land management.