The WePlan – Forests platform was developed by the Institute for Capacity Exchange in Environmental Decisions (ICEED) (formerly International Institute for Sustainability Australia) and the International Institute for Sustainability Rio (IIS-Rio), in partnership with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Secretariat as part of the implementation of the Forest Ecosystem Restoration Initiative (FERI) with the financial assistance of the Korea Forest Service of the Government of the Republic of Korea and the European Union.

The WePlan–Forests platform consists of a user-friendly web-based interface that automates the technical and computing requirements of complex spatial analyses and allows users without spatial modelling and optimisation expertise to explore a broad range of results and scenarios related to climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation.

The aim of the WePlan–Forests platform is to offer to all developing country Parties to the CBD with tropical forest a Decision Support Platform (DSP) for multi-criteria spatial optimisation planning for forest ecosystems. This can help countries to formulate more ambitious, realistic and specific forest ecosystem restoration plans and targets within their global commitments. As 2021-2030 has been declared the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and countries have adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims for at least 30 percent of degraded lands to be under effective restoration by 2030, demand for effective actions for restoration are high. Governments, funding organisations and other restoration stakeholders need to be able not only to identify areas that are suitable for restoration but also to prioritise them based on the benefits of restoring such areas.

There are two versions of the WePlan–Forests platform. The second version was released in May 2021. To access version history, click here.

The platform is designed for multi-criteria spatial optimisation planning for forest ecosystems. This can help countries to formulate more ambitious, realistic and specific forest ecosystem restoration plans and targets within their global commitments. WePlan–Forests is for the use of any who might need an easy, user-friendly tool to support spatial optimisation planning within tropical and subtropical forest ecosystems at the country level. This includes but is not limited to all country Parties to the CBD and its representatives, government environmental agencies and councils, academics, NGOs, and companies that are looking to plan their conservation practices (for instance, offsetting impacts).

No. Currently, the WePlan–Forests platform covers 37 countries with tropical and subtropical forest ecosystems. However, the platform is flexible and can be customised to specific targets, temperate forests and other non-forest ecosystems. If a country or region not currently covered by WePlan–Forests is interested in a customised version of the platform, specific and spatially-explicit data for the country (or region of interest) is required.

WePlan–Forests builds on state-of-the-art spatial databases (for biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, potential for natural regeneration, establishment cost and opportunity cost of the land) and a cutting-edge spatial optimisation framework for forest ecosystem restoration. Our spatial optimisation framework is based on linear programming, which can perform at least 30% better than alternative optimisation methods.

There are many questions that can be answered with the use of the platform, such as:

• 1. Where are the priority areas for restoration that maximise multiple benefits, while minimising costs?
• 2. What benefits are likely to be achieved over an area to be restored and what are the costs?
• 3. How do trade-offs between benefits and costs affect restoration priorities?
• 4. To what extent is there a trade-off between carbon and biodiversity benefits and what opportunities are there to identify good compromise solutions?
• 5. What planning solutions provide the greatest returns-on-investment and how much more cost-effective are they than alternative solutions?
• 6. How do carbon and biodiversity benefits change as a function of the total area of forest restored?

There are various datasets that go into the decision support tool, with resolutions varying from 30m to a few kilometres. The current version of the decision support tool covers tropical forest ecosystems at a global level, at 1km² resolution.

Our decision support platform synthesises both top-down remotely sensed data (for example, land use and cover), as well as bottom up collected data (such as opportunity cost of the land and plot level carbon sequestration data). Input data include species distribution modelling (and species extinction curve), the potential for aboveground carbon sequestration (based on predictive models), the potential for natural forest regeneration (based on predictive models), establishment cost (the cost of the restoration for tree planting and natural regeneration), and opportunity cost of the land use (for agriculture and pasture lands). You can read more about it in our Methodoloy page.

Our decision support platform, WePlan–Forests, is aimed at tropical and subtropical forests. Hence, restoration means the reestablishment of forests in deforested land.Regeneration is the natural process of regrowth of said forests that can occur when land is abandoned, without the intervention of tree planting.

We use a set of socioeconomic measures as input data for the models on potential for natural regeneration, establishment cost and opportunity cost of the land use. We do not have social benefit as a quantifiable outcome of restoration at this point, but we plan on including it in the future. Cultural aspects are harder to measure and are not included so far. However, if appropriate data is available, the framework can be customised to include such aspects.

The platform uses species distribution models to quantify what is the original distribution of the species and what is the current distribution. Current distribution is derived from original distribution after overlapping with what habitat is left for the species. Species are considered most at risk when there has been a large reduction in the distribution, and those are the species and areas that the tool will aim to protect to avoid extinctions. The tool will also consider the complementarity or redundancy, that is, it will look to protect the most species by prioritising areas with different species present (complementary). Edges of forests are often subject to more intense impact than the interiors, harbouring less rare, disturbance sensitive species. For this reason, reducing edge effects is usually a strategy of spatial planning tools to protect biodiversity. However, our platform currently does not take into account forest degradation and edge effects.

In this case, the user can simulate situations with different percentages of area restored and compare the benefits of each possibility. From that, it is possible to define a target percentage based on the costs and benefits expected. For instance, the user might have the goal to save 30% of species from extinction and find out how much area has to be restored to achieve that goal.

This depends on what the objectives of the restoration activity are. If the main objective is to promote biodiversity, then you would focus on restoring areas for wildlife. However, if climate change mitigation (carbon sequestration) is your main objective, then perhaps you would set targets based only on area. These are two commonly conflicting objectives.

The optimisation code is not open source at this point. However, you can now download the spatial data for the available solutions and cross it with other spatial information using your own GIS.

It is not the purpose of the platform to monitor restoration, only to plan it. Hence, it does not quantify how much restoration occurred.

WePlan–Forests does not consider methods for accelerating growth. On the other hand, our platform takes into account the potential for potential for natural forest regeneration, which can significantly reduce restoration costs. So, when you try to minimise the establishment cost of restoration, you are taking into account the potential for natural regeneration.

Community participation is a key part of the spatial planning for restoration. How much community participation is included depends on several factors, including the scale of the project and the budget. We do not undertake the restoration actions themselves; WePlan–Forests is used to inform spatial planning, but all actions will usually be taken with impact assessments, and with the support of local communities. That is also the case for ground-truthing the results obtained from the platform. However, much of the data used as input in the platform is ground-truthed.

In the current version of WePlan–Forests it is not possible for users to upload their own data. The platform is based on global data in order to streamline access and provide resources to countries without available national databases. However, we at ICEED are interested in working with anybody who might be interested in using their own data, or in developing and implementing solutions at the national or regional scale. We encourage you to contact us if that is your case.

Yes, there are many other benefits from restoration not indicated by the platform. Regarding the problem posed by climate change, it is critical to quantify the risks to build them into the framework, but that has not been done for this version. With the risks of climate change incorporated into the framework, areas with higher risk (where it is too arid, for instance, or likely to become due to climate change) have lower probability of being prioritised for restoration.