**People-Centric Nature-Based Land Restoration through Agroforestry: A Typology**

#### **Meine van Noordwijk 1,2,3,\* , Vincent Gitz <sup>4</sup> , Peter A. Minang <sup>5</sup> , Sonya Dewi <sup>1</sup> , Beria Leimona <sup>1</sup> , Lalisa Duguma <sup>5</sup> , Nathanaël Pingault <sup>4</sup> and Alexandre Meybeck <sup>4</sup>**


Received: 30 June 2020; Accepted: 28 July 2020; Published: 29 July 2020

**Abstract:** Restoration depends on purpose and context. At the core it entails innovation to halt ongoing and reverse past degradation. It aims for increased functionality, not necessarily recovering past system states.Location-specific interventions in social-ecological systems reducing proximate pressures, need to synergize with transforming generic drivers of unsustainable land use. After reviewing pantropical international research on forests, trees, and agroforestry, we developed an options-by-context typology. Four intensities of land restoration interact: R.I. Ecological intensification within a land use system, R.II. Recovery/regeneration, within a local social-ecological system, R.III. Reparation/recuperation, requiring a national policy context, R.IV. Remediation, requiring international support and investment. Relevant interventions start from core values of human identity while addressing five potential bottlenecks: Rights, Know-how, Markets (inputs, outputs, credit), Local Ecosystem Services (including water, agrobiodiversity, micro/mesoclimate) and Teleconnections (global climate change, biodiversity). Six stages of forest transition (from closed old-growth forest to open-field agriculture and re-treed (peri)urban landscapes) can contextualize interventions, with six special places: water towers, riparian zone and wetlands, peat landscapes, small islands and mangroves, transport infrastructure, and mining scars. The typology can help to link knowledge with action in people-centric restoration in which external stakeholders coinvest, reflecting shared responsibility for historical degradation and benefits from environmental stewardship.

**Keywords:** assisted natural regeneration (ANR); co-investment; ecosystem services; environmental stewardship; equity; forest and landscape restoration (FLR); landscape approach; rights-based approach; tree planting; water
