About the project

​The RESTORE+ project is a five-year partnership that aims at addressing Food-Land-Energy nexus related to restoration or utilization of degraded/marginal land in Indonesia and Brazil. In Indonesia, participatory mapping campaigns will be combined with land-use and supply chain modelling. The aim will be to identify specific areas with scenarios for restoration and sustainable utilisation and their implications on production (including on bioenergy), biodiversity, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and social impacts (e.g. land tenure rights). In Brazil, the project will enhance established land monitoring and modelling capabilities and support Brazil’s contribution to meeting the “Bonn Challenge”. The project will identify degraded areas, assess restoration options and explore trade-offs associated with implementation of the Brazilian Forest Code.

RESTORE+ is implemented by a consortium of 10 institutions led by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). The project is part of the International Climate Initiative (IKI). The German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) supports this initiative on the basis of a decision adopted by the German Bundestag.

The approach

The project combines remote sensing with crowdsourced information on biophysical and social complexity of degraded land. The information is used to assess restoration options with multi-objective models. The approach links qualitative information with socioeconomic and environmental parameters.

Identifying degraded land:

• Exploring possible definitions of degraded land including social and biophysical consideration
  
• Assess land degradation through analysis of high resolution (satellite) imagery
• Big earth observation data analysis
• Crowdsourcing and grass-root engagement

​​Assess implication of using different degraded land definitions in:

• ​Vegetation modelling to project carbon stock, potential yield under different restoration measures etc.
• Biodiversity assessment (priority areas, species, biodiversity modelling)

Assess sectoral interaction
of Food-Land-Energy nexus:

• ​Projection scenarios for production and trade of forestry and agriculture (food) commodities
• Land use/cover projection scenarios based on spatially explicit bottom-up informed economic models
• Assess bioenergy supply chain in its interaction with the overall energy system
• Assess market support for sustainability safeguards

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