1 research outputs found
Are Socioeconomic Benefits of Restoration Adequately Quantified? A Meta-analysis of Recent Papers (2000–2008) in Restoration Ecology and 12 Other Scientific Journals. Restoration Ecology
Many ecosystems have been transformed, or degraded by human use, and restoration offers an opportunity to recover services and benefits, not to mention intrinsic values. We assessed whether restoration scientists and practitioners use their projects to demonstrate the benefits
restoration can provide in their peer-reviewed publications. We evaluated a sample of the academic literature to determine
whether links are made explicit between ecological restoration, society, and public policy related to natural capital. We analyzed 1,582 peer-reviewed papers dealing
with ecological restoration published between 1 January 2000 and 30 September 2008 in 13 leading scientific journals.
As selection criterion, we considered papers that contained either “restoration” or “rehabilitation” in their title,
abstract, or keywords. Furthermore, as one-third of the papers were published in Restoration Ecology, we used that
journal as a reference for comparison with all the other journals. We readily acknowledge that aquatic ecosystems
are under-represented, and that the largely inaccessible gray literature was ignored. Within these constraints, we found clear evidence that restoration practitioners are failing to signal links between ecological restoration, society, and policy, and are underselling the evidence of benefits
of restoration as a worthwhile investment for society. We discuss this assertion and illustrate it with samples of our findings—with regards to (1) the geographical and institutional affiliations of authors; (2) the choice of ecosystems studied, methods employed, monitoring schemes applied,
and the spatial scale of studies; and (3) weak links to payments for ecosystem service setups, agriculture, and ramifications
for public policy.The authors thank the South African Water Research Commission
which provided financial support for this study, under
contract K5/1803, The impact of reestablishing indigenous
plants and restoring the natural landscape on sustainable rural employment and land productivity through payment for environmental services, awarded to ASSET Research (Pretoria)