Decision Support

Since 2019, IIS AU has been developing the WePlan - Forests in partnership with IIS Rio, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the Center for International Forestry Research. Our goal is to offer a decision support platform for developing country Parties to the CBD with tropical forests that will allow them to formulate more ambitious, realistic and specific forest ecosystem plans and targets within their global commitments.

These sophisticated analytical tools are generally used by highly trained staff and modellers, who work for scientific organisations or universities. WePlan, however, can be easily used by governments, NGOs, investors, restoration practitioners, or even local communities.

The problem formulation achieves a range of potential objectives within a given percentage of converted land to be restored:
> maximising benefits for biodiversity conservation
> maximising benefits for climate change mitigation
> minimising restoration establishment costs (while accounting for the potential for natural forest regrowth)
> minimising cost of land

WePlan allows for eight main analyses and outputs:
> identification of priority areas for forest restoration
> evaluation of where forest restoration activities can achieve the greatest benefits
> quantification of trade-offs among objectives (benefits and costs)
> identification of good compromise solutions
> quantification and risk reduction in the context of uncertainty
> exploration of the impacts of a variety of 'alternative futures’ in scenario analysis
> taking advantage of the potential for natural forest regrowth
> evaluation of the effectiveness of policy instruments that affect prices and/or costs