The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Restoration assists the recovery of degraded ecosystems, and nature-based solutions use ecosystems to address societal challenges such as flooding, heat and water supply. Both are expanding in policy and finance, but their effects are often assumed rather than measured. This page sets out how restoration and nature-based solutions are monitored, how their effectiveness is evaluated against a credible counterfactual, and what decision holders need before they commit land, money and time.
GCRI · Established · service level R0
Ecosystem restoration is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged or destroyed. Nature-based solutions use ecosystems to address societal challenges such as flooding, heat and water supply. Both expand in policy and finance, and their effects need measuring against a credible counterfactual rather than assuming.
Mountain ranges, deserts, wetlands, glaciers and reefs, and how remote each division is from large cities, shown for Southeast Asia as an example geography for this subject.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Restoration and nature-based solutions · Wetland complex · Accounting year 4
| Water level regime | 0.8 | 0.4 | 1.0 |
| Native vegetation cover | 0.5 | 0.5 | 1.0 |
| Invasive species pressure | 0.3 | 0.4 | 0.0 |
| Connectivity | 0.6 | 0.5 | 1.0 |
Monitoring and effectiveness. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Vegetation can return within years, but soils, species composition and ecosystem functions often take decades, and some may not recover. Early metrics such as tree cover say little about whether an ecosystem is on a path toward its reference.
Planting trees in natural grasslands, savannas or peatlands can damage biodiversity and water supply. Monocultures and non-native species store less carbon, support fewer species and can fail under drought or pests.
Protecting or restoring one area can displace clearing elsewhere. Fire, drought, tenure disputes and changing incentives can reverse gains, so the value of carbon and biodiversity credits depends on how leakage and permanence are handled.
Restoration can secure water, fuel and income, or it can exclude people from land they depend on. Outcomes depend on tenure, consent and benefit sharing as much as on ecology.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Nature-based solutions | Actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore ecosystems that address societal challenges while benefiting people and biodiversity, as the UN Environment Assembly defined them. |
| IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions | A set of criteria and indicators for designing and verifying nature-based solutions. |
| Leakage | Displacement of the pressure an intervention removes to another place, such as clearing that moves outside a protected area. |
| Reversal | Loss of the gains an intervention achieved, for example when restored forest burns or is cleared. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Area under restoration | hectares by intervention type | annual | Programme and national reporting | REPORTED |
| Survival of planted or regenerating stems | percent of stems surviving | per monitoring visit | Field plots | OBSERVED |
| Vegetation structure recovery | canopy height and cover relative to reference | annual | Lidar and optical satellites | ESTIMATED |
| Similarity of species composition to reference | dimensionless similarity index | per survey | Field surveys and environmental DNA | OBSERVED |
| Effect against a counterfactual | difference in outcome units with confidence interval | per evaluation | Matched comparison or difference-in-differences | ESTIMATED |
| Flood peak attenuation | cubic metres per second at a reference point | per event | Hydrological modelling and gauges | MODELLED |
| Consent and benefit-sharing status | documented status per project | per project | Project governance records | DECLARED |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| FAO Framework for Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring (FERM) | Registry and geospatial platform for restoration initiatives under the UN Decade | Free and open, attribution |
| Global Forest Watch and Global Forest Change | Tree cover gain and loss for checking restoration sites | Free and open, attribution |
| GEDI lidar and canopy height products | Vegetation structure for tracking recovery | Public domain; free and open |
| Protected Planet (WDPA and WD-OECM) | Area boundaries for context and comparison-site selection | Free for non-commercial use, terms of use |
| Verra and Gold Standard project registries | Project documents, monitoring reports and issued credits | Public records, terms of use |
| National restoration commitments and Bonn Challenge reports | Pledged and reported areas and approaches | Public records |
Biodiversity Nexus prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Environment ministries and restoration programme leads | Where to restore, with which approach, and how to report progress on the restoration target | Suitability layers, reference ecosystems, monitoring results with labels |
| Municipal and water authorities | Whether a nature-based solution can replace or complement grey infrastructure for flood, heat or water supply | Effectiveness evidence with a counterfactual, hydrological modelling, maintenance needs |
| Funders, investors and credit buyers | Whether a project delivers additional, durable outcomes and fair benefit sharing | Counterfactual evaluation, permanence and leakage evidence, consent records |
| Communities and Indigenous land holders | Whether to enter a restoration agreement and on what terms | Expected outcomes and their uncertainty, benefit and tenure terms, access to monitoring |
Restoration scientists and practitioners return to questions of design and proof.
Ecological recovery depends on whether the causes of degradation have been removed, whether seed sources and species can return, whether soils and hydrology are intact, and on time. Projects that plant trees on land still subject to grazing or fire, or that rewet wetlands without restoring flows, often fail quietly. Recovery of structure can be fast while recovery of composition and function takes decades.
Nature-based solutions add a second test: whether the intervention delivers a service, such as lower flood peaks or reduced erosion, reliably enough to be relied upon. Their performance varies with site, scale and extreme events, and it often improves as the ecosystem matures. Honest evaluation therefore separates ecological outcomes, service outcomes and social outcomes, and reports each with its uncertainty.
Comparison with matched control sites or before-after-control-impact designs, through causal inference. Good controls are hard to find and baselines are often missing.
Repeated measures of vegetation, species, soils and hydrology. Monitoring often ends when project funding does.
Satellite time series track canopy and wetness. They cannot confirm species composition.
Community-reported outcomes capture social effects. They need consistent methods and attention to whose voice is heard.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.