Unravelling Brazil's approach: Policy and governance gaps for social innovation in forest and landscape restoration

Abstract

Social Innovative - Forest and Landscape Restoration (SI-FLR) describes a process in which social innovation (SI) drives forest and landscape restoration (FLR), improving local livelihoods and delivering nature's contributions to people. This paper reveals policy gaps hindering SI-FLR approach in Brazil and offers recommendations to leverage its advancement, incorporating insights from the Brazilian context and international best practices and experiences. Brazilian policy documents in force in 2022 were analysed through the lens of five conceptual bridges of the SI-FLR framework. Applying a deductive approach and text-mining techniques, 91 SI-FLR-enabling policy instruments were identified, and the governance structures ruling them were mapped. Four major gaps emerged: (1) a lack of political will for the environmental agenda; (2) poor political coordination, resulting from the fragmentation of the mapped governance structures; (3) a missing landscape governance approach, reflecting the disconnection between these structures, restoration activities and value chains associated; and (4) a citizen science gap in innovation policy, highlighting the insufficiency of instruments promoting collaboration between public research and innovation institutions and local communities to address local social challenges. We conclude with two strategic recommendations: (1) structuring a National Landscape Restoration Governance System dedicated to improving policy coordination and landscape governance and (2) developing a regulatory instrument bringing citizen science to the research and innovation policy, increasing collaborative partnerships, innovation policy instruments and encouraging socioecological innovators. These recommendations represent a first step towards leveraging SI in the Brazilian FLR effort and may inspire other countries to expand the role of social innovators in developing nature-based solutions.