Transcript
Speaker: When we talk about restoring forests, we are not talking about something abstract. We are talking about resources that can contribute directly to food security, household income, and rural livelihoods.
Speaker: Hello everyone, I'm your host Gerda Wolfram from the International Union of Forest Research Organizations, IUFRO, the global network for forest science collaboration.
Speaker: You're listening to the eighth episode of season three of Branching Out the Forest podcast. It's great to have you with us as we explore more forest science. In this season, we will find out how scientists in our EUFRO walk across disciplines to tackle emerging topics.
Speaker: This work takes place in our 13 task forces. In our previous episode, we heard about forest living labs for sustainable climate adaptation. And in this episode, we will discuss post-conflict forest landscape restoration and how to make it back better.
Speaker: Let me welcome my co-host Rodrigo Mendes from the IU4Communications Working Party. Thanks for being a co-host for this episode, Rodrigo. Could you briefly introduce yourself?
Speaker: Hello everyone, my name is Rodrigo Mendes. I'm a forester by training from Brazil with a passion for science communications. Currently, I am a communications officer at the European Forest Institute in Finland and last year i joined IU4 Communications Working Party as a Deputy Coordinator. This episode is very important to me because I worked on forest landscape restoration back in Brazil and then later IUFO in 2019 when I was a trainee. So thank you, Gerda, for being well.
Speaker: A warm welcome to Branching Out Rodrigo and welcome to our guests, Maureen Elbe Kietze and Stefan Peters, co-leads of the IUFO task force that addresses post-conflict forest landscape restoration. We're happy to have you with us for this podcast episode.
Speaker: First, I would like to ask you, Maureen, to briefly introduce yourself. Can you give us an overview of your academic background, your research interest and your role in IUFRO? Hello everybody. um My name is Maureen Elbakizzi, as always you can introduce me.
Speaker: I am landscape ecologist by by training, but most of my work now sits between the inter interaction at the intersection of forest governance, civic ecology practices and post-conflict recovery.
Speaker: I'm affiliated with two universities in Sweden. It is the Swedish University of Agricultural Science and also Stoderton University, but also this one university in Ukraine, which is located in Lviv. This is National University of Ivan Fronko.
Speaker: And I coordinate IUFRO Task Force 49 on post-conflict force and escape restoration. Thank you, Maureen. Now it's my turn to ask Stefan.
Speaker: What is your career path and where does your main research interest lie? How are you involved in IUFRO? Hi everyone and thank you very much for the invitation. my name is Stefan Peters and I'm from a political scientist by training but I prefer to introduce myself as a social scientist.
Speaker: And I'm actually doing quite interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary work. I'm a professor at Gießen University in Germany, a professor for international relation and peace studies.
Speaker: And ah currently I'm generally based in Colombia. That has pretty much to do with the ongoing Colombian peace process. Not that easy situation right now, but I'm working there as academic director of the Colombian-German So I'm really interested in peace, unfortunately also in violence and this transitions from violence, war, and internal armed conflict to peace, especially in Latin America. That's also how I came to UFO.
Speaker: and Because actually i'm working a lot on natural resources, on environmental peace building and Marine reached out to me, invited me to this task force. And it is an interesting opportunity to work with people from all over the world and also from very different disciplines on this topic of Well, what happens in this transition towards peace and also what are consequences of peace and war on forests?
Speaker: Well, thank you. Thank you both, Maureen and Stefan. And from what I've heard now, is you are indeed looking at the topic of post-conflict forest landscape restoration from different yet complementary angles from the ecological and forest management perspective and the political and social science perspective among others.
Speaker: A key focus of your work is the resilience and recovery of forests in regions affected by armed conflicts. Sadly, as we all know, there are many such regions around the world.
Speaker: And they are affected for long periods of time. This summer, for example, there was a major forest fire in Austria that was likely triggered by World War II ammunition parts containing phosphorus that self-ignited in the heat.
Speaker: Maureen, can you tell us more about how armed conflicts impact forests in the short and in the long term? Okay, I think it's useful to distinguish between the impacts we see immediately and those that can continue for decades after the armed conflict has ended.
Speaker: The most visible impacts are direct physical damage due to the armed conflict. Fores can be burned by fires caused by shaling or damaged by explosions or heavy military vehicles, or it could be fragmented for military infrastructure or defensive positions.
Speaker: And the soil and water also could be contaminated by ammunition, fuels and other hazardous substances. The scale can be enormous of these physical damages. For example, in Ukraine, 2024 was the worst fire season recorded since satellite monitoring began.
Speaker: And was around 1 million hectares of land burned. And of course, not all of this was forested land, but also not every fire was caused directly by the military activity.
Speaker: But the special pattern of major fires strongly correspond with the war front. And there is also another immediate impact that is less visible. for For example, forest management itself can stop functioning.
Speaker: And forests foresters may no longer be able to patrol forests, monitor pests, prevent and fight with fires and the carry out inventors, etc.
Speaker: and staff also may be just replaced or displaced or mobilized, infrastructure is destroyed, and entire areas become inaccessible.
Speaker: And this connects ah the immediate impacts of conflict to very long-term ones. For example, in Ukraine, around 140,000 square kilometers or roughly one-quarter of country the land are potentially kind of contaminated by mines for this year, this period, and other explosive ordnance.
Speaker: And therefore, forests may look completely intact but still be too dangerous to enter. so it can be properly monitored, managed or restored. We know from other countries so or how long this legacy can last. For example, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, almost three decades after the war, around 900 square kilometers were still considered mine suspected territory in 2025.
Speaker: And if we move to another continent, Laos gives us an even longer perspective. Between 1964 and 1973, 270 million cluster submunitions were dropped on the country, and it's estimated that around 30% failed to explode.
Speaker: And now, more than 50 years later, unexploded ordnance is still being cleared. And since 1996, there is a national government program that um alone destroyed more than 1.3 million explosive items.
Speaker: So the end of finding clear does not mean that the end of the impact on forest landscapes. Thank you, Marine, for sharing those numbers. Indeed, these conflicts have far-reaching and lasting consequences for forests.
Speaker: But it's not only the forests that are affected, of course. Stefan, can I ask you as a political scientist, ah how do people and communities suffer from the destruction of forests because of armed conflict?
Speaker: Thank you. First of all, of course, if there is violence, communities suffer in very different forms. But in forest areas, I think we have to distinguish. So first of all, the livelihoods.
Speaker: What are people living? Because often communities have a very direct connection with nature, with the forest. So if there is a structure of the forest, this is a short-term impact, of course.
Speaker: But we also have to take into consideration the mid- and long-term impacts, not only on livelihoods, on socioeconomic situation, but also on cultural aspects, especially um regions, um very remote areas, um often indigenous people.
Speaker: There is a strong connection which goes beyond the socio-economic aspects. And actually right now there is increasing research on affectations of nature or territory due to armed conflicts.
Speaker: And I think that's also important to make this distinction. Nature, of course, is more the objective numbers of destroyed forests. But if we talk about territory, I think we also have to talk about the relationship between humans and nature.
Speaker: Well, thank you, Stefan. That's really very interesting to really make this distinction and to learn about this ah importance of um accounting not only for the livelihoods or for the socioeconomic um aspects of those impacts, but also of these cultural connections, of these connections, as you say, between humans and and nature.
Speaker: Now, Marie, when forests and forest landscapes are destroyed or damaged, Why is it important to restore them? In other words, what is the main aim of rebuilding post-conflict forest landscapes?
Speaker: Can you focus perhaps on the ecological aspects and on forest ecosystem services? Thank you, Gerd. I will try to focus even if it's hard to um differentiate between ecological functions and social functions in post-conflict forest landscape escapee restoration.
Speaker: But I think the starting point is that we are not restoring the trees alone. We are restoring the ecological functions that forests provide and that people depend on. And of course forests provide habitat for biodiversity, store carbon, but forests also regulate water, protect soils from erosion, influence local climate and provide food, firewood and many other resources important for people.
Speaker: And in conflict-affected landscapes, these functions can become even more important because people people's livelihoods are already under enormous pressure. When we talk about restoring forests, we are not talking about something abstract. We are talking about resources that can contribute directly to food security, household income, and rural livelihoods.
Speaker: We see these connections between forest and recovery in many parts of the world. For example, in Rwanda, landscape restoration after conflict has been closely connected to restoration with restoring degraded landscapes in densely populated rural land.
Speaker: The aim was to restore forests, but also those ecosystem services that are important for ah rural livelihoods. And this is why I think the term forest landscape restoration is important, not just forest restoration, but forest landscape restoration.
Speaker: So for me, successful post-conflict forest landscape restoration means restoring the functions, services, and relations between forests and people, as already Stefan said, that make this landscape pliable again.
Speaker: That's a very impactful message, Marina. Thank you. Forest landscape restoration doesn't just restore forests, right? It really helps restore lives and livelihoods and beyond.
Speaker: So it's important to understand what happened to the land before the degradation, how it can be restored, and then how the local community is directly affected can contribute to the success of the forest restoration.
Speaker: And on that, I would like to ask Stefan, how does successful restoration look like in the end, also for people and communities? What is the key to success in your view?
Speaker: This is um also something which is always hard ah to just generalize. And sorry for repeating this argument, but actually, i think one of the problems is often that we think about at least the media often people want to hear this solution and probably one-size-fits-it-all solution. And of course, we know that does not work.
Speaker: But having said that, i think it is, first of all, important what just Marine also mentioned. It is an issue which has to do with food security, restoring normal, whatever that is, life ah for the communities.
Speaker: But I want to highlight another aspect, especially in the post-conflict situation. Because conflict affects community in different ways. Often, not always, communities are divided.
Speaker: It might be, for instance, that there are communities, a part of them victim of the conflict. other community member or former community members ah part of perpetrators, but facing the same problem.
Speaker: And here comes a approach from peace and conflict studies in which is called environmental peace building. So we have to highlight that it is not very easy recipe.
Speaker: But with a shared problem, which all members of the communities know that they have to work in restoration because, for instance, for few food security, then people who have been on different parts of the conflict, on different sides of the conflict,
Speaker: They can work together and they can work together not because they really want to do so, because but rather because they know they have to work ah together in order to get better results.
Speaker: And here it is at least possible, there is no guarantee, but it is possible that there is um construction of confidence. And if you once work together twice and so on, you will probably have a different view on the other.
Speaker: That does not mean that there is reconciliation or something, but probably it is easier to get a peaceful conviviality. And I think...
Speaker: This is also an aspect we have to take into a consideration that restoration, yes, it is important for the sake of basically a restoration of forests here for socioeconomic aspects, but it might also be a powerful instrument for peacebuilding.
Speaker: Thank you, Stefan, for sharing this information. I totally agree with you. This really no size fits all and repetition is very important for us to remind ourselves, but also future generations to learn from our experiences.
Speaker: I'm sure the road to your success is long and difficult. Maureen, can you highlight some of the main challenges on the ground? From a forest management perspective, perhaps you can give us one or two examples from different parts of the world?
Speaker: Yeah, um ah forest restoration is extremely complex process, but the forest landscape restoration after the armed conflict is an even more challenging process.
Speaker: And of course, there are many challenges, but I would like to highlight three challenges, ah which, for example, Ukraine experience right now or will experience in the future. Moving from the immediate technical problem to the much longer term questions of how restoration can actually be sustained.
Speaker: And the first challenge is that after the armed conflict, we cannot seem to assume that we can restore the forest that was there before. The ecological conditions themselves may may have changed. And due to the war, but also due to other drivers, for example, like climate change.
Speaker: And shaling, fires, military vehicles and contamination can alter soils and vegetation and create very different conditions for for forest regeneration.
Speaker: In Ukraine, for example, researchers now are examining the effect of bore-related contamination. including heavy metals on soil properties and microbial communities.
Speaker: This means that before deciding what to plant or even whatever planting is the right intervention, we first need to understand what the site is capable to support now.
Speaker: And so restoration might sometimes require us to think about the which species and management approaches are appropriate under these new ecological conditions.
Speaker: This is the first challenge. The second challenge is about risks, and I would like to focus now on fires, forest fires. Because war leaves behind damaged tents, dead, and lying trees and large amount of different combustible materials.
Speaker: At the same time time, access for normal forest management and firefighting can be restricted. This means that fire resilience has to be considered ah from the beginning of restoration through species choice, stand structure and long-term management rather than planting trees first and thinking about what fire, what to actually about the fire later, about risks later.
Speaker: And finally, the third challenge which I could highlight now is time. Because forest restoration is already a long-term process, but post-conflict restoration can take generations.
Speaker: For example, a very ah powerful exams from came again from Laos. More than 50 years after the end of the bombing, unexplored ordinance clearance is still continuing. And for example, in 2023,
Speaker: the Clearance operations in several provincevin provinces in Laos reportedly faced a serious funding shortage, with the miners going unpaid.
Speaker: And for me, this illustrates that the fundamental challenge for post-conflict restoration, the ecological time scale is much longer than political and funding time scale.
Speaker: And international attention and construction funding may last for a few years, while making land safe and established resilient forests may require decades.
Speaker: So the challenge is not simply how to restore a forest after the conflict. It is how to decide what kind of what kind of forest appropriate under they change ecological conditions, how to manage new risks, such as, for example, fires, and how to sustain restoration for decades the recovery may require.
Speaker: Thank you, Maureen. So, as you're saying, there are many challenges, both short-term and long-term, and to achieve lasting results, it is important to understand which restoration approaches work best in a given situation and to provide the resources needed to support them, but also in the long run. Stefan, can I ask you now, what are the main challenges for forest landscape restoration after conflicts regarding communities and institutions? Yes, and I would like to address this question with a counter question.
Speaker: Peace is always good for forests. Of course, peace is always a good thing. But I think it is also important to see the challenges which might come with peace for forests.
Speaker: And here I would like to mention an example from Latin America, especially from Colombia. In some parts of Colombia, during the internal armed conflict with the FARC guerrilla, um the FARC, they did protect forests.
Speaker: Not because they are or they were environmentalists, but rather for um reasons from their warfare tactics or strategics.
Speaker: So ah guerrilla um needs forest in order to hide. However, after the peace agreement, um there were a lot of investment in the Colombian Amazon, for instance, because before there were non-state armed actors, especially the fart guerrilla in this case,
Speaker: If I may ask the audience, would you invest in ah in a region where there is guerrilla fighters controlling the region? Probably not, if you're not extremely risky in investment profile.
Speaker: Afterwards, it was open for investment. There was a lot of cattle ranging. but also, for instance, extractive projects so related to natural resources, new streets, infrastructure, all that might happen after peace agreement, which puts a lot of pressure on forests, for instance.
Speaker: And it is important to highlight that's not only a situation we know from Colombia, but also from other parts. So I think this is an important point. A second point I would like to mention because you ask for challenges also for, let's say, more from a political perspective.
Speaker: In it transition from war to peace, there are so many things you have to do and with um few resources. And I think this is also something important, trying to di to get into dialogue also with Marine.
Speaker: These are sometimes really long-term affectations and it is important to address them, but you have to get support from different political parties, from society to address these issues compared to other very pressuring issues.
Speaker: There are so many presuring issues in a society and often environmental issues are seen as, okay, we will come to that later. And I think we know it from from different upper contexts. And I think um this is really here.
Speaker: Thank you, Stefan. True. We will always face challenges, right? But how we respond and can show us how what what works and then what is possible because there's how communities react, how the government or us react, either cities or governments.
Speaker: Marine, how are science in general and your task force in particular going to contribute to successful post-conflict restoration? How will you share ah the outcomes of your work and who will benefit from this work?
Speaker: I could say that my motivation to initiate this task force was, of course, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and all this violence that has happened in my country because I live in Ukraine now. in rifner Professionally, I'm connected to to Sweden, but I moved back to Ukraine and I work now in Ukraine.
Speaker: I was thinking how I could contribute professionally to change aeation to the to help to restore land, degraded land or destroyed land. And therefore, they idea to to came to my mind to initiate this task force.
Speaker: And I think the main contribution of our task force is to bring together and compare knowledge from different conflict affected regions. and One important activity already underway is the special feature in sustainability science.
Speaker: It brings together research from different conflict-affected and post-conflict settings and from different disciplinary perspectives. And the issue is planned, I mean, it has to come out maybe in the end of this year. And I think we will collect more than 20 scientific papers from different um ah contexts, from different countries.
Speaker: We also have conducted a series of webinars and continued this activity to exchange knowledge on impact assessment and restoration approaches, governance, souls you know way ah social innovation, adaptive management and nature-based solutions.
Speaker: Another important activity is to ah have to start dialogue with global players, such as, for example, FSC International, Greenpeace, WWF. FIO to understand their role in post-conflict forest landscape escape restoration and they begin with so the dialogue with FSC International it it's already scheduled it will be in November the exact type date will come later and because we want to explore what knowledge and the cap capacity FSC can contribute in conflict affected context using experience in responsible forest management monitoring and stakeholder engagement
Speaker: Stefan said that we need resources for long-term perspective, but we also need knowledge and expertise for long-term perspective. And I think these global players could actually contribute and we would like to understand how what their contribution could be.
Speaker: And also ah importantly, we don't want this knowledge to remain only in scientific publications. Our program also includes workshops with communities, policymakers, activities for young professionals, ah conferences, sessions and other activities.
Speaker: So I see that our task force could be a bridge that connects knowledge across countries and disciplines, but it also could connect researchers with forest managers, international organizations, policymakers and communities. A lot of work ahead.
Speaker: Thank you, Marine. Yes, a lot of work ahead, a lot of important work. I think it's actually, it's a great way to look at it, um to to see the task force as a bridge that connects knowledge and supports informed decision making.
Speaker: um Stefan, now we've heard many activities already. Are there any other task force activities that you would like to highlight? let's be Let's be honest. It's not always easy. There are papers I probably do not understand a lot.
Speaker: Very technical, but important, of course, to have this knowledge. But I think, once again, this is really, really important that we manage to get these communication between different disciplines, getting out of academia, working, of course, with international organizations, policymakers,
Speaker: but also with ah communities. And I think here it is also important how to work with communities. And there is a lot of discussion on the risk of what some colleagues ah call in academic extractivism.
Speaker: communities think, okay, now academia comes, but they will leave and will they ever come back? Why should we work together with them? So I think it's also about reflecting our role in academia to doing Not only very good research, of course that's important, but also our methodological approaches, our ethical standpoint, working with communities in highly asymmetric contexts, I think. This is also um important to not only reflect on it, but also put it in practice. Because um I think that's actually where it is more most important to think about our role as
Speaker: as academics in a broader situation. Probably in most parts of the world, there is an increasing pressure on academia, on science. And I think we have to find answers how to deal with um those powerful voices sometimes of ah decision makers who just do not care about science.
Speaker: who just put anything of post-truth or whatever into social media and what can we do um against this disrespect for scientific knowledge.
Speaker: And I think this also brings us to the question, how can we continue to do good scientific work, but also we need to get a more communication with other audiences, explain what we are doing, but probably also rethink of how we are doing science and for the sake of or what are our main goals beyond, of course, the important peer-reviewed articles.
Speaker: but Thank you. This is a very powerful message, actually, and a very good addition to get the bigger picture, really. And I think it's, as you say, important for scientists to reflect on the role of academia and on how they ah communicate with other stakeholders and communities in particular.
Speaker: It was almost like a if a key message there, but I think that's where we're getting to now because before we wrap up, I'd like to ask each of you to provide one concise key message.
Speaker: So, Maureen, what would you like our listeners to remember from this conversation? Yeah, if there is one thing that I would like listeners to remember, it is that post-conflict forest landscape restoration does not automatically i mean making it back better.
Speaker: After the war, there is enormous pressure to rebuild quickly. And for example, now there is a big concern in Ukraine about this issue of blind reconstruction to make it quickly using donor money, donor's money, and their sort of vision how the forest should be restored.
Speaker: But restoring quickly is not necessarily ah restoring well. And we need to think not only about trees, but also about soils, water, biodiversity and future risks. And at the same time about whatever forest can be safely managed and whatever the institutions and communities around them can recover, which means they forest recovery and community recovery as they go together.
Speaker: So for me, make it back better means using restoration as an opportunity to build more resilient forest landscapes and also more resilient relations between forest and people.
Speaker: And it doesn't happen automatically. It has to be deliberately ah built into recovery process from the very beginning. And this is what we are trying to communicate with different stakeholders across Ukraine now.
Speaker: Thank you, Marine. Yes, we do need a multidisciplinary approach to post-conflict forest restoration and patience. And then I like what you said, ah restoring quickly doesn't really necessarily mean restoring well.
Speaker: Now it's your turn, Stefan. Can you give us your key message for another talk? Yes, my key message would be to have a look at the connections between environmental issues, political, in this case, peace building, social, economic and cultural.
Speaker: And of course, the best would be to have a win-win-win-win situation, but probably that is not always that easy to reach. Also look at the tensions and try to reduce these tensions. And this needs, of course,
Speaker: interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary um science, but it needs also the compromise of many stakeholders. And yeah, that would be my my my key message perhaps.
Speaker: Thank you. Thank you both, actually, for these powerful key messages. But of course, I would also like to hear from Rodrigo, also from the communicator's point of view. What have you learned from this conversation and what is your key takeaway?
Speaker: Well, I learned so much today. My key takeaway is that Understanding and addressing the impacts of conflict on forest landscapes and their restoration is essential for protecting nature and ensuring that people can live and thrive in a healthy, secure and resilient environment.
Speaker: The examples we've heard here today also give us in my opinion, ah valuable lessons and experiences to share with a wider audience, but who may not be directly affected by conflicts, but who are still impacted by their consequences. And those experiences are important to tell and share. Thank you, Rodrigo. Thank you all for these excellent statements and for this interesting conversation on post-conflict forest landscape restoration and how to make it back better.
Speaker: And thank you to our listeners for joining us. Look out for our next Branching Out episode, where we will explore the interaction and synergy of carbon 3S. 3S means sink, storage, and substitution in forest value chains, the topic of another EUFRA task force. And if you want to know more about our Euphro, follow us on social media or click on the show notes.
Speaker: And until next time, bye.
