Beyond land restoration: learning from successful smallholder communities

Land degradation remains a pervasive global challenge, undermining ecosystem functions and threatening rural livelihoods. Its impacts are particularly severe for smallholder farmers, who account for nearly one-third of global food production and provide the primary source of food calories in many low-income countries. Addressing both the current and anticipated land degradation is therefore not only a local imperative but also a global priority, situating land restoration at the core of sustainable development agendas, including national strategies, international commitments such as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and initiatives like the Bonn Challenge. Ethiopia exemplifies this challenge, as its highland agricultural landscapes continue to experience significant land degradation—combined with recurrent natural and human-induced shocks— threatening the productivity and resilience of smallholder systems that form the backbone of the national economy. Despite decades of restoration interventions implemented by government agencies, development partners, and community programs, restoration outcomes remain highly variable, with some communities achieving substantial high restoration outcomes while others require additional resources and time to achieve the same. To investigate the drivers of this variability, this study employed a transdisciplinary approach, examining 72 communities across the Ethiopian Highlands with high-, medium-, and low-performance in land restoration. The analysis reveals that social and institutional factors, including strong local leadership, robust self-organization, inclusive decision-making, and active community participation throughout the design, implementation and progress monitoring of restoration programs, are critical determinants of success. Communities exhibiting these attributes not only restore degraded landscapes more effectively but also demonstrate greater capacity to innovate, adopt adaptive land management practices, and transform their farming systems in response to biotic, abiotic, and socio-polictical. In contrast, communities with weaker local leadership capacity, organizational structures or limited engagement often require additional resources and time to achieve comparable results. These findings underscore that technical interventions alone are insufficient for sustainable restoration; instead, targeted investment in building the social, institutional, and adaptive capacities of local communities provides the foundation for lasting restoration outcomes, enhanced resilience, and sustainable smallholder livelihoods. By highlighting the interplay between social dynamics, institutional support, and ecological restoration, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of how sustainable landscape restoration can be effectively scaled across degraded agricultural systems, particularly in regions vulnerable to multiple shocks and stresses.