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.

From smallholder farms in Africa to the busy streets of Bogota, communities are reshaping the way the world designs its cities, uses energy and produces food. These examples show not just what could work, but what already does. Learn more about the series.

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.

Data from TerraFund, the financing arm of WRI’s Restore Local initiative, shows that when restoration is designed with communities at its center and then tracked rigorously, these projects do more than just repair ecosystems. They create new jobs, generate more income, build new skills and strengthen the livelihoods of people in these communities. With an existing portfolio of 198 projects across 27 African countries and an additional 53 projects onboarding this year — all designed to improve the ecosystem and community well-being — TerraFund provides valuable insight into how these outcomes are achieved.

Since 2022, TerraFund projects have created more than 108,000 new jobs, supported more than 504,000 people, and engaged nearly 88,000 community volunteers across Africa’s vital landscapes. Behind each of those numbers is a person whose relationship to the land, and to their own future, has changed.

Information on socioeconomic outcomes is often viewed by the restoration community as difficult to collect, expensive or unreliable. But this data is challenging that assumption, showing it is possible to better measure how restoration affects people’s lives and livelihoods.

The numbers show the scale of what is unfolding across Africa's restoration landscapes. But they cannot fully capture the lived experiences behind the change: how people adapt their livelihoods, earn a living, build skills and work the land. Behind every figure is a person whose relationship to that land, and to their own future, has been reshaped. The stories that follow bring those experiences into focus.

Women Taking the Lead

Carolyne Sigilai did not set out to become a leader. She was a farmer in Mauche, a village in Kenya’s Nakuru County, working to make a small piece of land productive with limited resources. Like many women in rural Kenya, she’s responsible for both the farm and her household, yet had little access to agricultural training, financial resources and the local decision-making structures that influence how land is managed.

Through Seed Savers Network, a TerraFund-supported organization, she joined a training program on sustainable land management, agroforestry and leadership. It reinforced something often overlooked: Women are not just participants in restoration, but central to its success.

For decades, women have been at the frontlines of land use across Africa, managing farms, collecting wood for fuel and sustaining households. Yet they have often been excluded from decision-making in formal restoration programs. The result is a persistent gap between those who work on the land and those who shape its future.

Sigilai is now closing that gap. She brought together 25 women — many of whom had never participated in formal agricultural training — and taught them the new agroforestry practices she learned. This included planting techniques, soil management and the long-term benefits of integrating trees into farmland.

At home, Sigilai also experienced a significant shift. Her husband, initially skeptical of the Seed Savers Network, began attending the meetings with her. Over time, he became one of her strongest supporters. As the family took this new knowledge and began selling seedlings, their income grew and a source of economic stability.

Sigilai’s story is not exceptional among TerraFund projects participants. Increasingly, this pattern emerges when restoration is designed around people, not just around targets.

Across TerraFund-supported projects, nearly half of all employed participants are women. More than 60% of those projects deliberately address barriers faced by women, including access to training, employment, land and decision-making roles. Women now hold 51% of part-time positions across these projects.

But the numbers only begin to capture what is changing.

In Kenya’s Ololunga landscape, the Paran Women Group brings together 64 Indigenous women’s groups and has been restoring degraded land since 2005.

This is a region shaped as much by conflict as by climate. For years, Ololunga and the surrounding areas were marked by intercommunity tensions, as pastoralist groups competed for increasingly scarce pasture and water. Cycles of drought intensified the pressure, and disputes over land use often escalated into violence. Women, who relied on these same landscapes for fuel, food and income, bore the brunt of both environmental degradation and insecurity, yet had little voice in how resources were managed.

The Paran women began with restoration, growing trees and rehabilitating degraded land. But over time, their work evolved into something more expansive. They turned agricultural and restoration waste into briquettes, a cleaner alternative to charcoal. Today, they supply at least 214 households and generate a steady monthly income.

The impact is visible across the landscape: Households have shifted from charcoal and firewood to briquettes, easing pressure on nearby forests and turning a subsistence activity into a growing local economy.

Just as importantly, the social dynamics are shifting. What began as a women-led initiative has drawn in men and youth, too. For the first time in the community, men are joining women in self-help groups and village savings and loans associations. They are participating in decisions about land use, conservation, and local development.

Local administrators say disputes have declined.

In Ololunga, restoration is no longer just about trees. It has become a form of conflict mitigation, an economic strategy and a pathway to greater inclusion.

Youth Find Their Future in the Land

In Rutsiro District, Rwanda, 26-year-old Habimana Enos and his wife, Nyirabatabazi Odette, 25 were both unemployed until recently.

Through the Rural Development Initiative's restoration project they found jobs as a data collector and nursery manager. Together, their income enabled them to purchase a cow valued at 350,000 Rwandan francs ($240), pay their health insurance on time and build a life on land they are helping to restore.

Their story reflects a shift in demographics among conservation work across Africa. Historically, formal restoration employment has flowed to older, predominantly male, established workers. That pattern is reversing. Across TerraFund's portfolio, young adults between 18 and 35 years of age hold 56% of part-time roles and a striking 82% of full-time positions. More than 60% of all jobs are now held by young people.

In Uganda, Tree Adoption Uganda specifically targets unemployed youth in rural communities, training them to establish and manage indigenous tree nurseries. Those who entered the program without skills or income are leaving as nursery managers, field officers and community mobilizers. More farmers in the area are now volunteering their land for conservation initiatives, inspired by the enthusiasm of the young people leading the work.

In Ghana's Cocoa Belt, Goshen Global Vision set up village savings and loans associations alongside its restoration work, creating a financial infrastructure that is influencing the futures of young people in the community. One senior high school graduate used his restoration earnings to purchase a university application. A Takoradi Technical University student bought school supplies. These are small amounts of money by some measures, but they are the difference between a future and the absence of one.

Restoration as Education

Restoration projects are also feeding and advancing education: Communities are gaining knowledge, while schools gain resources and children gain skills that will outlast any single planting season.

At Loglogo Girls Secondary School in Marsabit, Kenya, agriculture is mostly taught outdoors, where students learn by tending the trees they planted.

In 2024, the International Tree Foundation supplied the school with 2,000 seedlings and a 5,000-liter water storage tank as part of their TerraFund project. Working alongside the school's agriculture teacher, they trained students in effective planting and tree care techniques. The seedlings became part of the Kenya national secondary school examinations curriculum, and test scores later showed that the students achieved outstanding grades in agriculture.

The achievement rippled outward. The school became a hub of practical agricultural learning, drawing in the wider community and inspiring the adoption of sustainable farming practices. As the trees mature, they will serve as windbreaks, provide shade and reduce soil erosion, turning what began as a classroom project into a long-term ecological asset.

The same impulse is showing up in Rwanda, where Prime Biodiversity Conservation engaged nine schools across Rutsiro and Rubavu districts, involving 5,500 students in tree planting and environmental clubs. Prime Biodiversity Conservation also developed a children's book about trees, how to plant them and the specific species involved. The results included 27 teachers, who integrated environmental education into their daily teaching, and 12 youth volunteers, who received training in data collection, tree planting and community mobilization.

Restoration as Economic Opportunity

In Makueni County, Kenya, 76 farmers associated with the Jumuisha Initiative began selling fruit to local markets. By December 2025, mangoes had earned all but one of the farmers a total of approximately 459,000 Kenyan shillings ($3,557). Lemons earned 35 farmers 135,000 shillings ($1,045). Pawpaws added more. Farmers who joined a restoration project to plant trees now have diversified income streams, new markets and a reason to keep the trees growing.

This is the logic behind restoration as an economic opportunity. When fruit trees are planted, they produce shade, improve biodiversity and store planet-warming carbon. But they also produce fruit, which can then be sold.

In Togo's Savanes province, the Mouvement Alliance Paysanne du Togo has taken that logic one step further. Through their Motivation des Planteurs initiative, community members are not paid based on the number of trees they plant, but instead for how long their trees survive. The longer the trees live, the more the farmers earn. Annual celebrations, attended by the mayor and local village chiefs, recognize the community members who have kept the most trees alive.

In Ghana, Y&M Regeneration installed solar panels on cocoa farms, using them not only to pump water for crops but to supply electricity to surrounding villages. Schoolchildren now have access to rechargeable lamps for studying, while farmers can charge their phones, improving communication and their access to markets. What began as a restoration intervention has simultaneously expanded access to energy, education and market access.

The diversity of restoration jobs creates its own story: nursery workers, seed collectors, field officers, community mobilizers, project managers, briquette producers, nursery managers, site coordinators. Together, they sketch a restoration economy that is still taking shape, but is already creating jobs, generating income and expanding opportunities for the people it serves.

Community Solidarity and Unexpected Innovation

When communities are trusted to design their own restoration projects, they can better adapt the projects to the people and places involve and find creative successful solutions.

In Rwanda's Nyabihu District, for example, a football (soccer) tournament helped transform a landscape.

The Wildlife Conservation Initiative organized a series of games to draw communities into restoration. Crowds of up to 2,000 gathered for the matches, and 4,000 people attended the final, including local leaders and district officials. By the end of the games, the spectators had planted 7,500 native trees.

This is the kind of story that doesn’t appear in a monitoring report. But it captures something essential about how restoration works best: as a process that consistently and continuously involves the community in shaping and sustaining the work.

That spirit of innovation runs through restoration projects like YARDO-SL’s pay-to-grow model, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, which gives 75 young men and women a monthly stipend to act as community climate ambassadors. Participants maintain and replace trees and run community awareness campaigns, which has reduced mudslides and floods along the Peninsula Highway. In the Tokeh community, for example, no deforestation has been recorded in the past six months.

In Kenya, Ahadi Achievers Empowerment reached 1,871 smallholder farmers through their Gen Z Na Miti initiative, a campaign designed by and for young people that delivered training on pest management, pruning, soil conservation and financial literacy. Forty percent of participants were youth, including many people living with disabilities. The sessions were also organized with chiefs and elders to ensure broad participation.

The Measure of Restoration Success

These restoration projects suggest that restoration, when designed with people at its center and measured beyond the number of trees planted or hectares restored, functions as more than an environmental intervention. It becomes a system for building resilience, expanding opportunities and strengthening communities over time.

Samuel Peter is studying to be a forester because a restoration project needed labor. Carolyne Sigilai is leading her community because a training program opened a pathway. Students in Marsabit, Kenya, are excelling in agriculture exams because restoration brought both resources and knowledge into their school. Families in Ghana are paying school fees because restoration created income.

When people see their future in the land they are restoring, the land has a future too.