Enabling implementation and scaling of landscape restoration for multiple sustainable social-ecological benefits in Africa

Enhanced landscape restoration action within African countries both through promoted initiatives as well as locally led efforts has been promoted in recent years. However, landscape restoration research in Africa has focused largely on the biophysical dimensions of the process with less emphasis on the human dimensions within the social-ecological system to date. Proven and promoted technologies exist, but what is lacking is the consideration of people and their context. As such, this special feature will look at various effective ecological practices to restore ecosystems and advance understanding on how these can and should be embedded with society. This special feature investigates three important, and insufficiently researched forces that impact the system in an African context and that are (i) the social-ecological drivers of land degradation and bottlenecks for addressing them as precondition for restoration success, (ii) who decides on the restoration focus (location, interventions), and how this process connects stakeholders across the relevant scales, and (iii) who benefits in terms of use rights and to what degree restoration can support poverty reduction through a circular-green-bioeconomy including payments and enterprises.

This special feature welcomes good quality manuscripts focused on one of the three main forces of focus within an African context.

Open to submissions: 1–31 May 2026.