*2.4. Our Approach*

Interventions to support the restoration of the functionality of lands, forests and landscapes can be many folds, and operate at different scales (local, national, global), involve various combinations of private and public initiatives and investment, relate to the rights and authority of local actors and stakeholders in multiple ways (ranging from eviction to full consultation and respect of Free and Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) or public and private support for local initiatives). These interventions seek various entry points into Social-Ecological Systems other than directly addressing land cover (e.g., by tree planting), such as modified rights, enhanced know-how, supported markets, or incentive systems. These are always related to specific contexts that are in turn very diverse depending on the social-ecological system in place and its historical path-dependency.

The dual purpose of our proposed typology is:


The first purpose is to reflect an actor-centric (bottom-up) perspective, the second a planner (top-down) one.

As typologies of goals and issues can be derived from other frameworks, such as the set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) targets and indicators (or any other national or local level framework), we focus here on the knowledge side of the interaction and thus on a combined typology of intervention options and contexts, within the main steps of issue cycles, as illustrated in Figure 1B [102].

Restoration interventions are chosen out of a wide array of options, supposedly finetuned to the local context. Therefore, to elaborate a typology of restoration options by context, we cross two different typologies:


The resulting 'restoration' typology positions (combinations of) interventions in a specific context, expecting considerable 'endogeneity' in what is attempted and has success where. Endogeneity is one of the main obstacles to interpreting observable patterns of associations (e.g., forest cover and human well-being) in terms of replicable mechanisms and generic theories of change. Real learning from track records of any intervention elsewhere requires contextualization of its initiation and operationalization.

A technical perspective on restoration takes 'ecosystem structure' as the direct target for interventions, triggering the cascade (Figure 1A) to function, services and human benefits, but a social-ecological perspective starts from the Response part of the DPSIR cycle (Figure 1C) and identifies leverage points (preferably at Driver level), leading to land use change that leads to changes in ecosystem structure (Figure 2).

**Figure 2.** Relating the cascade and DPSIR concepts of Figure 1a and Figure 1c, respectively, in social‐ ecological systems that shift from degradation to restoration; the social pentagon is shorthand for rights, know‐how, markets, local ES issues and teleconnections. **Figure 2.** Relating the cascade and DPSIR concepts of Figures 1A and 1C, respectively, in social-ecological systems that shift from degradation to restoration; the social pentagon is shorthand for rights, know-how, markets, local ES issues and teleconnections.

#### **3. Land Degradation: Symptoms, Drivers, and Indicators 3. Land Degradation: Symptoms, Drivers, and Indicators**
