- Integrating knowledge of Indigenous and local communities (IPLCs) into the process of seed propagation can strengthen forest restoration outcomes in Southeast Asia, and beyond.
- These communities’ familiarity with their local tree species, landscapes, and ecological rhythms makes them indispensable partners in restoration efforts, the authors of a new op-ed argue.
- “Engaging IPLCs in the critical processes of seed production is not just a matter of improving restoration success, but also empowerment and engendering ownership,” they write.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.
Since the launch of global restoration initiatives such as the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), large-scale tree planting has become the hallmark of many restoration projects. Ambitious targets, such as The Nature Conservancy’s Plant a Billion Trees campaign and the World Economic Forum’s One Trillion Tree Initiative, highlight the potential of tree-based restoration in achieving the triple goals of climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, and social well-being.
However, this fascination with the number of trees planted often obscures the more complex challenges of ensuring tree survival, resilience, and adaptation in the face of climate change. Addressing these challenges requires not only technical expertise but also place-based knowledge that communities living within and around these forests have accumulated over generations.
In the tropical forests of Southeast Asia, forest restoration does not occur in a vacuum: Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) are dependent on forests for their livelihoods and subsistence. Their familiarity with the local species, landscapes, and ecological rhythms makes them indispensable partners in restoration efforts.
Engaging IPLCs is especially important when it comes to the delicate process of collecting, storing, and caring for plant propagules and seedlings (hereafter referred to as seed), which can contribute to higher survival rates and more resilient forest stands over time. This commentary examines how integrating IPLC knowledge into the upstream process of seed propagation can strengthen forest restoration outcomes in Southeast Asia, and what enabling conditions are needed to support their meaningful participation.
Quality vs. quantity
Tree-based restoration is a slow process that takes years, if not decades, to reach fruition. Restoring self-sustaining forest populations requires an even longer time frame that may extend well beyond the duration of a project. Selecting high-quality seeds improves the long-term success of restoration, but this aspect has generally received less attention in restoration outreach and messaging.
To this end, ensuring the genetic and species diversity of seeds is important for preventing inbreeding and population bottlenecks, providing resistance against pests and disturbances, and enhancing resilience and adaptability to climate change. Long-term studies in China and Panama have demonstrated the benefits of prioritizing species diversity in tree-based restoration, with notable increases in carbon sequestration and surface temperature buffering capacity.
In practice, this requires understanding the provenance of the seeds, whether they are sourced from multiple parent trees, and how they have been collected and propagated. However, a survey of restoration practitioners reveals core challenges with accessing and maintaining robust seed stocks.
Part of the challenge lies in the ecology of tropical forests in Southeast Asia. Many tree species, such as those from the Dipterocarp family, often have irregular and unpredictable “masting” events, when large numbers of seeds are produced within a short time window. For some forest types, tree species can be endemic, which means they are highly adapted to specific ecosystems, and found only within a limited range, further limiting available seed stocks. For example, peat swamp forests and kerangas forests (tropical heath forests) in Southeast Asia are known to host several endemic species that are difficult to find elsewhere.
Community role in tropical forest restoration
Irregular and short masting events coupled with the high endemicity of some tropical forest species underscore the need for localized measures to ensure the timely collection of seeds. IPLCs play a crucial role due to their proximity to forests, allowing them to monitor parent trees and respond to masting events. Their familiarity with the landscape, knowledge of tree species, and awareness of parent tree locations provides a distinct advantage during seed collection.
An as-yet-unpublished study by the Center for Peatland and Disaster Studies (CPDS) at Riau University in Indonesia, where two of us also conduct research, explored local ecological knowledge regarding the characteristics of peat swamp forest species in the Riau Islands off Sumatra. Local communities were able to identify more than 60 peat swamp forest species, of which 15 were recognized as having commercial value.
When researchers engaged the local communities in the mass production of tree seedlings for peatland revegetation, participating community members came up with four propagation techniques: direct seed sowing, wildlings transplants, shoot cuttings, and stem cuttings. Within two years, the local communities were able to produce tens of thousands of seedlings in nurseries.
Incorporating local knowledge into technical designs creates valuable moments for adaptive management and learning between different stakeholders. A restoration program initiated by researchers in East Tebing Tinggi subdistrict, Riau province, yielded a seedling survival rate of only 15% a year after planting. Feedback from local communities revealed underlying issues with a lack of ownership, along with disturbances from crop harvesting and transport.
So community members made adjustments to plant the seedlings on private land and along the boundaries to reduce disturbances and strengthen the demarcation of community lands. Doing so not only balanced restoration and production needs, but also increased community ownership and interest in planting native seeds.
These examples serve to highlight how developing a quality seed supply with high survival rates is influenced by community needs and preferences. This can be further expressed through customary rules and practices that govern the collection of forest resources, including seeds. Communities from a village in Londerang, in Indonesia’s Jambi province, are averse to certain species of trees in the nutmeg family (Myristicaceae), due to the blood-red sap and risks of offending spirits. Incorporating such considerations into restoration project design can substantially increase project buy-in and acceptability.
New tech and tools for community seed and restoration
Crucially, community-led seed production often suffers from a lack of market and technical support. Even though the aforementioned local communities in Riau were able to mass-produce seeds, the communities eventually abandoned these seeds due to a lack of market, despite restoration practitioners reporting difficulties with finding appropriate planting materials.
Emerging technologies and tools combining IPLC knowledge with technical know-how can foster deeper collaborations between stakeholders and support community-based efforts. One such example is My Farm Trees, a digital platform that enables smallholders to access finance for restoration, share their learnings, and collaborate with different stakeholders to meet restoration agendas. Other digital databases and apps, such as the Diversity for Restoration Tool, India’s Native Plant Germination Database, and Quality Tree Seed Transformative Partnership Platform, are increasingly being developed for practitioners and communities to access and store seed information, and strategize seed selection, storage, and processing for different restoration goals.
Care should be taken, however, to ensure the equitable involvement of IPLCs in the development of these databases and apps, and to install appropriate data governance structures. Pioneering examples include the Native American Seed Sanctuary and Indigenous seed banks (e.g., the Cherokee Nation’s Seed Bank). However, such efforts remain fragmented and small-scale in Southeast Asia to date.
Seeding hope
There is a need to focus more on ensuring seed quality in the restoration of tropical forests in Southeast Asia, a process that should be coupled with the involvement of IPLCs. To do so, several suggestions can be made:
- Integrate learning and adaptive management as part of the restoration process, in which practitioners facilitate open feedback from the communities and vice versa;
- Incorporate traditional and local ecological knowledge of seed collection and propagation into technical designs, in addition to building local capacities and infrastructure to support the preservation and transmission of such knowledge;
- Provide sustainable finance models to ensure that IPLCs can be engaged in restoration work in the long-term. This includes connections to information and markets for quality seed supply.
In an era of restoration, the focus needs to shift from numbers of trees planted to ensuring quality. Engaging IPLCs in the critical processes of seed production is not just a matter of improving restoration success, but also empowerment and engendering ownership.
Zu Dienle Tan is a research fellow at the Earth Observatory Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, and her research focuses on modeling fire risks in peatlands and peatland restoration. Ahmad Muhammad is a researcher at the Center for Peatland and Disaster Studies (CPDS), Department of Biology, Riau University, Indonesia, and his research focuses on peatland ecology and peatland restoration, with particular interest in the biodiversity and ecological dynamics of tropical peatland ecosystems. Sigit Sutikno is also a researcher at CPDS and his research focuses on peatland hydrology and peatland restoration. Nur Estya Binte Rahman is a Ph.D. candidate at the Asian School of Environment and Earth Observatory of Singapore and her research focuses on peatland ecology, peatland restoration, and socioecological knowledge systems.
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Citations:
Schnabel, F., Beugnon, R., Yang, B., Richter, R., Eisenhauer, N., Huang, Y., … Bruelheide, H. (2025). Tree diversity increases forest temperature buffering via enhancing canopy density and structural diversity. Ecology Letters, 28(3), e70096. doi:10.1111/ele.70096
Schnabel, F., Guillemot, J., Barry, K. E., Brunn, M., Cesarz, S., Eisenhauer, N., … Potvin, C. (2025). Tree diversity increases carbon stocks and fluxes above — But not belowground in a tropical forest experiment. Global Change Biology, 31(2). doi:10.1111/gcb.70089
Jalonen, R., Valette, M., Boshier, D., Duminil, J., & Thomas, E. (2017). Forest and landscape restoration severely constrained by a lack of attention to the quantity and quality of tree seed: Insights from a global survey. Conservation Letters, 11(4). doi:10.1111/conl.12424
Anirudh, N. B., Van Veen, F. J., Ripoll-Capilla, B., Buckley, B. J., Erb, W. M., Niun, M. A., … Harrison, M. E. (2025). Lowland heath forests of Indonesian Borneo: Ecological value and conservation challenges. Journal of Tropical Ecology, 41. doi:10.1017/s0266467425100084
Cite this article
Ahmad Muhammad, Nur Estya Binte Rahman, Sigit Sutikno, Zu Dienle Tan (2026). Rooting tree seed production in local knowledge boosts forest restoration outcomes (commentary). Mongabay Conservation news. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-328254
