Biocultural restoration improves delivery of ecosystem services in social-ecological landscapes

Increasing local people and indigenous communities' participation on restoration programs is widely recommended as a way to increase restoration long-term benefits and local people's commitment with restored lands. Here, we demonstrate how traditional knowledge can provide crucial information on usefulness of plant species that increases direct value of forest and landscape restoration programs. Our study analyzed secondary data from 73 studies that assessed indigenous and local knowledge regarding plant's utility across the densely populated dry forest of the Brazilian Caatinga. Our results suggest that highly valued plants represent a relatively small number of useful species (52 out of 632 useful species) that account for more than half of the plant services (i.e. functional space represented by the uses people give to plants). Interestingly, these plants belonged to closely related lineages, suggesting that people must select plants based on phylogenetically conserved traits that provide utility. We propose that accounting for indigenous and local knowledge in early phases of restoration process such as species selection can both maximize classical restoration targets (e.g. species diversity) and increase delivery of ecosystem services to forest-dependent people. Such an interdisciplinary integration moves us a step closer to ambitious targets set for global ecosystem restoration based on fair and inclusive participation of indigenous people and local communities.