Dominic Andreas Martin

Across sub‐Saharan Africa, tree‐based restoration efforts are dominated by exotic tree species due to their rapid biomass accumulation and short‐term economic returns. However, their limited contribution to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has renewed interest in native‐tree restoration as a more sustainable strategy. Madagascar represents a pivotal case study given its high‐level commitment to counter accelerating deforestation rates and preserve its exceptional endemic biodiversity. Yet important knowledge gaps remain: studies rarely draw on community perspectives to examine the conditions shaping native‐tree restoration opportunities and constraints across forest biomes and time scales, linking past drivers, present states and future projections. Integrating these perspectives can help identify the timing, levers and barriers shaping restoration outcomes. [Correction added on 10 November 2026, after first online publication: The preceding two sentences have been updated.] To address these gaps, we used 45 participatory mapping across three major forest biomes in Madagascar, structured around four horizons: the past decade, the present, and two 10‐year future scenarios representing business‐as‐usual and desired futures. This approach enabled us to examine perceived landscape changes, current restoration constraints and enabling conditions and locally envisioned pathways towards desirable futures. Across biomes, participants linked current landscape outcomes to past agricultural expansion and charcoal production, with recurrent fire as a key mechanism driving landscape change. Under a business‐as‐usual scenario, native‐tree restoration was not a community priority, particularly in humid and transitional forests. While its ecological benefits are valued, this restoration was constrained by precarious livelihoods, insecure tenure and fears of stricter control over customary lands and resources. In contrast, the desired future scenario revealed an aspiration to double native‐forest cover on open lands, contingent upon the provision of livelihood‐compatible incentives, secure land rights and empowered local governance. Overall, our findings demonstrated that demand for native‐tree restoration is shaped by the interaction between ecological goals, land rights and livelihood security. Native‐tree restoration outcomes depend not only on ecological priorities, but on how people envision the future of the landscapes they live in. Therefore, native‐tree restoration is most likely to succeed when designed as a negotiation of socially legitimate and multifunctional futures. Unless policies address these realities, native‐tree restoration efforts may remain ecologically ambitious but socially fragile. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Forests are essential for climate, biodiversity, and society. Consequently, conserving or increasing forest cover is the focus of many national and international policies. Yet implementing such policies locally remains a massive challenge, partly due to diverging perceptions of small-scale forest cover changes and their effects on livelihoods. In this study, we couple remotely sensed forest cover changes at the village level with local perceptions of land-use changes between 2010 and 2020 and their drivers. Our focus is on the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Laos) which maintains some of the highest forest cover in Southeast Asia. We conducted focus group discussions and walking interviews with village committees in 27 villages in the province of Vientiane and Vientiane capital. We find that remote sensing data and the perception of village committees align on negative forest cover trends at small scales. The village committees expressed that current economic, policy, and socio-economic drivers are more likely to lead to the maintenance or expansion of agricultural areas rather than to the conservation of forests. As future developments, the village committees prioritize infrastructure and socio-economic development over forest conservation. Our findings highlight the importance of a context-specific understanding of forest cover changes. More just and effective forest policies can be formulated by coupling local perspectives with remote sensing in landscape planning. Ultimately, this study illustrates that forest cover changes are complex, contentious, and require participatory and adaptive policy responses that reflect this reality.

Global calls for more inclusive restoration highlight the need to consider multiple actors including local communities, practitioners, policymakers and donors, who all have different demands. Yet, restoration rarely integrates these demands. We propose the Demand4Restoration framework, a demand-oriented approach in which actors’ demands explicitly guide restoration evaluation and planning. In evaluation, actors' demands define what to assess, how, against which benchmarks, for whose benefit, and which drivers to test. In planning, they inform where to restore, for what purpose, how, by whom, and under what conditions. Demand4Restoration clarifies alignments and mismatches across actors, improving social legitimacy and sustainability of restoration.

Farming systems face an increasing sustainability challenge requiring integrated solutions to minimize the trade‐offs between the social, ecological and economic dimensions of sustainability. Yet, most research remains siloed, limiting interdisciplinary understanding of farming systems as coupled social‐ecological systems (SESs) and precluding holistic solutions. Addressing this gap, we employed an interdisciplinary knowledge co‐production approach in Kilimanjaro, integrating social, ecological and economic data to understand the multidimensionality of the farming systems. We first surveyed 306 farmers and used multivariate analysis to categorize the farming systems. Based on data from semi‐structured interviews with 15 farmers and field observations of agricultural plots they own or manage, we conducted a cost–benefit analysis of each farming system. Through thematic analysis, we revealed the perceived impacts of farming practices on biodiversity, soil and yields. We triangulated these findings with those from ecological studies conducted on the same agricultural plots. We finally identified challenges to and solutions for sustainable farming, complemented by five key informant interviews. We found a heterogeneous agricultural landscape characterized by maize‐bean, homegarden and coffee farming systems. All systems were estimated to be profitable but sensitive to environmental and market‐related shocks. Farmers and key informants identified four major challenges, largely similar across farming systems: biophysical constraints, production costs and market constraints, infrastructure limitations and gaps in agricultural extension support. Proposed solutions included farm‐level interventions such as manuring, biological pest control and planting drought‐resistant crops, which were low‐cost practices and perceived to offer multiple benefits. Notably, using high‐cost agrochemicals, particularly in the maize‐bean system, was perceived to have long‐term negative environmental impacts. These perceptions were consistent with the findings from the ecological studies. Institutional‐level solutions involved leveraging cooperatives and improving agricultural information, while policy and government‐level solutions focused on subsidies, incentives for organic produce, market regulation and tax reductions. By integrating social, ecological and economic dimensions in an interdisciplinary knowledge co‐production approach, we identified context‐specific challenges and actionable solutions that account for local practices and structural support needs. This approach, which values farmers' experiential knowledge alongside ecological and economic insights, has the potential for wider utility in guiding sustainability in farming systems beyond Kilimanjaro. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Mount Kilimanjaro, with its steep elevational gradient (770–5886 m a.s.l.) and pronounced land-use heterogeneity, supports high biodiversity and diverse nature’s contributions to people (NCP), but it is underrepresented in global spatial assessments. We address this gap by mapping NCP supply across 12 ecosystem types on the southern slopes identifying hotspots and coldspots and quantifying synergies and trade-offs among NCP categories. We use 25 context-specific NCP categories that integrate local and scientific knowledge with field measurements and remote-sensing-derived proxies. Combining long-term field data with remote sensing and machine learning, we upscaled plot-scale indicators into standardized supply maps. Total NCP supply is strongly concentrated in mid-elevation ecosystems: the 1100–2200 m band alone accounted for ∼59% of total supply compared with ∼18% in the lowlands (700–1100 m), and the 1100–2800 m belts together provide ∼73%, whereas high-elevation zones (2800–4600 m) contribute Ocotea forest and homegardens at mid-elevations, while coldspots occur in Erica forest and Helichrysum vegetation at high elevations and in maize fields and savanna at low elevations. We detected moderate ( r = 0.55) to strong synergies ( r = 0.83) among the three NCP groups (material, regulating, non-material). After accounting for climatic co-variation, the correlations among NCP groups weakened ( r = 0.23–0.44), underscoring the critical role of climate for NCP supply. Our study maps NCP hotspots and coldspots across Mt. Kilimanjaro and provides a decision-support layer for conservation, restoration and agroforestry management, as well as a blueprint for spatially-explicit NCP mapping and analyses.

Transformations toward desirable futures remain challenged by the complexity of social-ecological systems (SES), including the diverse actors’ perspectives -i.e., what they perceive as desirable futures and how to achieve them. Given that SES are also affected by multiple anthropogenic drivers of change, one-size-fits-all governing approaches fall short. Participatory Scenario Planning (PSP) has proven useful in engaging actors in making sense of this complexity, although few PSP studies have been conducted in the Global South mountain SES. Therefore, we conducted three PSP workshops with smallholder farmers, business owners, and nature conservationists in the Kilimanjaro SES, Tanzania, to understand (1) which SES elements and drivers of change they perceive as characterizing the current SES conditions, (2) how they envision future scenarios based on SES dynamics and the interplay of multiple drivers, and (3) management actions toward desirable futures. Actors identified key SES elements: water resources, biodiversity, land use and agriculture, tourism, traditions and culture and drivers of change, including population growth, loss of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), technological development and climatic change. Actors envisioned four future scenarios, in which they identified key aspects of desirable futures: environmental protection, land use and agricultural management, and cultural preservation. Proposed management actions mapped onto different levels of governance, from those requiring national commitment to those requiring local collective actions. Based on actors’ reflections on their past and present experiences and their visions of desirable futures, our conclusion is twofold: (1) desirable futures require local agency, and (2) there is a need for polycentricity in governance.

Expanding shifting cultivation drives deforestation and biodiversity loss in many tropical regions. Agroforestry is promoted as a sustainable alternative balancing human needs and conservation. However, its effectiveness for amphibians remains understudied, especially in Madagascar, where old‐growth forests decline rapidly and amphibian endemism is high. We employed time‐standardized diurnal and nocturnal visual encounter surveys and habitat assessments in 81 plots across a mosaic of old‐growth forests and agroforests under various management practices in north‐eastern Madagascar. We compared amphibian species richness, encounters and community composition between old‐growth forests and agroforests and analysed how agroforest management practices influenced amphibian assemblages. We recorded 54 amphibian species, including 10 potentially new to science. Old‐growth forests exhibited 34.8% higher species richness and 48.4% more encounters compared to agroforests, with distinct species composition despite some overlap. Thick leaf litter in agroforests positively influenced amphibian encounters, while higher overstorey tree density increased compositional similarity to old‐growth forests. However, this similarity declined with increasing time since conversion. Synthesis and applications. While old‐growth forests are irreplaceable for conserving Madagascar's endemic amphibian diversity, agroforests can also support amphibian populations, especially if management enhances habitat complexity through increased leaf litter and the presence of large native trees. Promoting these biodiversity‐friendly practices in agroforests can create critical habitats without additional forest conversion. Sustainability certification, economic incentives and targeted farmer training could facilitate the adoption of such management practices, aligning amphibian conservation with agricultural goals.

Forests are essential for climate, biodiversity and society. Conserving or increasing forest cover is the focus of many national and international policies. Yet implementing such policies at local levels remains a massive challenge, in part due to contrasting perceptions of small-scale forest cover changes and their effects on livelihoods. In this study, we couple remotely sensed forest cover changes at the village-level with local perceptions of land-use changes between 2010-2020 and their drivers. Our focus is on the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Laos) which has set a national goal of increasing forest cover to 70%. We conducted focus group discussions and walking interviews with village committees in 27 villages in the province of Vientiane and Vientiane capital. We find that remote sensing data and the perception of village committees align on negative forest cover trends at small scales. The village committees expressed that current economic, policy and socio-economic drivers are more likely to lead to the maintenance or expansion of agricultural areas, rather than to the conservation of forests. As future developments, the village committees prioritize infrastructure and socio-economic development over forest conservation. Our findings highlight the importance of a context-specific understanding of forest cover changes. More just and effective forest policies can be formulated by coupling local perspectives with remote sensing in landscape planning. Ultimately, this study illustrates that forest cover-changes are complex, contentious, and require participatory and adaptive policy responses that reflect this reality.