Restoration's Success Goes Beyond Counting Trees

When Samuel Peter first took a job as a casual laborer on a restoration project four years ago in southwestern Nigeria, it was just work — the kind that comes and goes with the seasons. The project initiated by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in the Olokemeji Forest Reserve needed hands to tend seedlings and care for young trees. He needed income.

Today, Peter is enrolled at the University of Abeokuta, studying forestry and wildlife. His tuition is paid by wages he earned from the project. Along the way, he moved from casual labor to permanent staff, developing a fascination with tree species and the science of restoration.

For years, global restoration efforts — like AFR100, where governments committed to restore 100 million hectares of degraded land across Africa by 2030 — would have difficulty in capturing this kind of story, instead measuring only what’s easiest to count: trees planted and hectares restored.

But a more complete picture is emerging about restoration’s impact on local communities, driven by new approaches to monitoring, reporting and verification, known as MRV.