Policies for encouraging forest restoration

Throughout the 20th century, many countries created national parks, forests, nature reserves, and sanctuaries to provide benefits that are underproduced on private lands . Private lands are now especially valuable for providing ecological services that publi c lands cannot provide, due to the increasing demands for all uses and the political and economic conflicts associated with allocating public lands between competing uses (e .g ., recreation, watershed protection, biodiversity conservation, wildlife habitat, commodity production) (Kline et at . 2000) . In many countries, the supply of public lands may not b e adequate to ensure desirable flows of beneficial ecosystem services . Furthermore, because many ecological processes cross ownership borders, enhancing the flow of benefit s requires management at a broader, landscape scale and with the participation of both public and private landowners (Kline et al . 2000; Gottfried et al . 1996; Boyd and Wainger 2002a; Johnston et al . 2002) . Many ecological services are public goods (goods or services for which it is hard o r impossible to exclude from benefiting those who do not contribute to paying the costs o f producing the good) or externalities (costs or benefits that are inflicted on or received by oth ers, that are not reflected in market transactions) . Ecological services typically are under produced on private lands because the landowners bear the costs of restoring, preserving , and managing their lands for ecological services as well as the opportunity costs of forego ing alternative income-producing activities, while all members of the community enjoy th e benefits for free. As a result, governments worldwide have been experimenting with policies and programs to encourage forest restoration, including a combination of activities o n public lands and regulations and incentives to private landowners . Deciding on the best combination of policies for encouraging restoration require s determining which ecosystem services are amenable to market solutions, which require