Journal of Environment and Earth Science www.iiste.org ISSN 2224-3216 (Paper) ISSN 2225-0948 (Online) Vol.5, No.13, 2015 177 Restoration Trajectories in Forest Ecosystems with special reference to Ethiopian Forest Teshome Soromessa (Corresponding author) Associate Professor, Chairman, Center for Environmental Science, College of Natural Science Addis Ababa University, P.O. Box 1176 (Off.) 80112 (Private), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Sisay Nune PhD Candidate Centre for Environmental Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopian Abstract This review article is about Restoration Trajectories in Forest Ecosystems with special reference to Ethiopian Forest. Restoration attempts to return an ecosystem to its historic trajectory. It has time scale but interventions can accelerate the process. There is billions of land world-wide which could be dedicated for restoration. Ethiopian landscape has been degraded severely and concerted efforts are being made to reverse the degradation. Ethiopia made commitment to restore 22 million hectares during the UN Summit in September 2014. However, we need to understand the dynamics and factors influencing restoration and its process; otherwise we believe the existing church forests in the northern and central Ethiopia can serve as reference for restoration. Due to climate change, long time degradation and desertification effects achieving the pristine forest stage might not be possible. But at least creating similar forest community as that of the existing forests might be achievable. Experiences of Korea and Costa Rica can be cited as best practices. Keywords: Restoration, Forest, Ethiopia, church forest 1. Introduction Forest restoration in the broad sense is not a new endeavor (Stanturf, n.d). Restoration attempts to return an ecosystem to its historic trajectory. Historic conditions are therefore the ideal starting point for restoration design (SER, 2002) 1 . There are three basic ways of restoration namely, reclamation, rehabilitation and reconstruction (Stanturf, n.d). Another important factor for restoration is time scale. Restoration may take a decade or century. However human beings can accelerate the process. Given efforts exist to restore the forest ecosystem worldwide the net balance shows still negative (FAO, 2010). FAO reported net forest loss; Africa lost its forest between 1990 and 2010 more than the rest of the Continents (FAO, 2010).However, the same report indicated gains in Asia and Europe. Stanturf, (n.d) has pointed out that forests can grow or restoration can happen when countries are transformed their economy from Agricultural based to industrial based and for example Europe changed energy consumption from biomass based to fossil fuel. Most of African countries’ economy is dependent of agriculture and therefore forests are regressing rather than progressing. FAO, 2010 has reported that Africa lost the big chunk of forests between 1990 and 2010. According to Woods-Schank, 1990 • In 1980, 19.4 million km 2 of the earth’s surface were covered by tropical forest (13% of planet’s land area) • In 1990 this figure was dwindled down to 18 million km 2 . During this period FAO estimated the rate of deforestation at 114,000km 2 per year. • Of the closed tropical broadleaved forests in existence in 1980, 56% were in Latin America, 26% in tropical Asia and 18% in Africa In the beginning of 1980s planting of tropical forests was proceeding at a rate of 11000km 2 or 1.1million ha yearly (Woods-Schank, 1990). Before 1980s some 115,000km 2 of area was afforested in the tropics and in 1985 the afforested area reached 170000km 2 of which 72,000km 2 was accounted for Brazil, India and Indonesia (Woods-Schank, 1990). The same source indicated the ratio of deforestation to afforestation in statistcal term as 10:1(ibid). Between 1990 and 2000 there was a net loss of forest area of about 9.4 million ha yr -1 (-0.22% yr -1 )(FAO 2001 in Andel & Aronson, 2006). FAO, 2010 has presented the total forest loss and gain worldwide (Figure 1 below). Except in Asia and Europe the figure shows net forest loss. Restoration attempts to return an ecosystem to its historic trajectory (SER, 2002). However, it is not clear if 1 Society for Ecological Restoration Science & Policy Working Group. 2002. The SER Primer on Ecological Restoration. www.ser.org/ brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by International Institute for Science, Technology and Education (IISTE): E-Journals