Supporting better forest landscape restoration by making investor funding for tree planting conditional on an adequate explanation of how tree seeds and seedlings will be sourced

Massive public and private investments in tree planting are being made in attempts to sequestercarbon, support human livelihoods and conserve biodiversity (Mansourian et al. 2022). As theabove quote attests, however, tree planting is often done poorly. From a social perspective, therequirements of the different institutions and actors involved, including especially the needs oflocal communities, are not always properly considered (Edwards et al. 2021). Meanwhile, froman ecological perspective, problems include the use of an insufficient diversity of tree species,which leads to monocultures and causes environmental damage, and the reliance upongenetically unadapted and physiologically poor seeds and seedlings, which means treeestablishment is low and the growth of trees is slow (Graudal et al. 2021). This unsatisfactorystate of affairs is despite knowledge being available on how to do things better, but the contextfor improving practice is often complex, and a number of measures are needed to bridge theknowledge–action gap. Here we discuss just one of the measures that we consider to beimportant for improvement, which is related to the ‘sourcing’ of tree planting material forplanting projects. We suggest that in circumstances where potential planters of trees apply forfunding from investors to undertake tree planting, they should have to explain clearly the treesthey intend to plant and how they are going to source the necessary seeds and seedlings ofthese trees. Our view, supported by a survey of the global tree planting community, is thatinvestors should make the receipt of funds for planting conditional on an adequateexplanation on these points. Our contention is that doing so will help drive better tree seed andseedling sourcing practices widely, and that this will support further tree planting investmentsand, ultimately, greater impact.