Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies (SIAS) organized another series of Future Himalayan Research Seminar on February 3, 2023. The speaker of the seminar was Dr. Harry Fischer, Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences who presented on “Forest restoration in the context of global climate goals: Community forestry institutions and prospects for more democratic forest governance.”
Dr. Fischer presented his interesting research in Himachal Pradesh, India that examined the effect of 30+ years of tree plantation, which showed no statistically significant improvement in the forest canopy on average, while species composition has shifted away from biodiverse native forests to monoculture pine plantations. On the contrary, the forest cover had increased in those places where the communities have had a long-term influence on planting processes and management.
Dr. Fischer argued that there is a need to move away from more generalizable “best practice” principles to better understand the everyday politics of landscape interventions in order to achieve restoration goals.
