Where is the Innovation in the Brazilian Atlantic forest restoration initiatives? A preliminary study.

Joyce Helena Sanches. 2020. Where is the Innovation in the Brazilian Atlantic forest restoration initiatives? A preliminary study. Master Thesis. University of Padua - Department of land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry.

Supervisor

Summary
Concern about the value of forests and natural ecosystems has increased worldwide and has fostered large-scale international forest restoration agreements, promoting connectivity between ecosystems and landscapes, including people's well-being. In order to comply with international forest restoration agreements, it is necessary to overcome barriers such as high operational cost, low operational performance in restoration activities or insufficient forest seedlings to attend the market (Brancalion et al., 2012). Innovation is believed to be an important tool in finding solutions and reducing bottlenecks in FLR (Brancalion et al., 2012; Brancalion & van Melis, 2017). The research had as main objective to understand the role of innovation in FLR initiatives through interviews, questionnaire and literature review. The interviews and the questionnaire were carried out from July to September 2020 and descriptive statistics was used to analyze and interpret the results. As a result, 66 innovations were registered, 61% being classified as product or organizational innovations. The innovations are distributed in 9 Brazilian states, being São Paulo and Paraná states responsible to 50% of the records. The main bottlenecks identified in the forest and landscape restoration initiatives refers to the high cost and low operational performance, scarcity of seeds and forest seedlings and insufficiency in economic exploration/productive arrangements. We conclude that innovation is a common factor among the restoration initiatives of the Atlantic Forest Biome, the ecosystem and innovations are related and to scaling up FLR it is important to connect stakeholders and to create strategic alliances, even if from different segments in the search for collective evolution.