This report highlights important differences in political, legal, and institutional environments, and the need to recognise opportunities and limitations in the local context when restoring land.

The report, “Forests, Trees and the Eradication of Poverty: Potential and Limitations,” shows that forests and trees support human well-being and are critical to end poverty. It finds that forest-poverty dynamics are affected by a range of social, economic, political, and environmental context factors, such as rural outmigration, gender norms, remittance flows, and elite capture. The report’s key messages are highlighted below. Forests and trees can help the poor face global changes such as climate change. Benefits from forests and trees to human well-being are unevenly distributed.

Forests and other tree-based systems such as agroforestry contribute to food and nutritional security in myriad ways. Directly, trees provide a variety of healthy foods including fruits, leafy vegetables, nuts, seeds and edible oils that can diversify diets and address seasonal food and nutritional gaps. Forests are also sources of a wider range of edible plants and fungi, as well as bushmeat, fish and insects.