Living Land

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social acknowledgement and local support for the conser-

vation measures implemented, and to secure the long-term

ecological maintenance of treated areas post implementation.

The Icelandic Forest Association (IFA) non-governmental

organizations (NGOs), dedicated to forestation on deforested

areas, were established by 1930. In the following decades,

several regional branches were established under the IFA

umbrella. From its establishment, IFA has provided profound

support to the forestation and woodland protection practised

directly by IFS. In 1969, increased public discussions about

the poor condition of Icelandic ecosystems compared to past

ecological richness led to the establishment of conservation

NGOs; Landvernd. These new NGOs were meant to provide

voluntary support to soil conservation activities comparable to

what IFA, the forest NGOs, provided to forestation projects.

Around 1970, a number of small individual NGO groups that

annually worked on land reclamation on a voluntary basis were

also established. The increased environmental awareness was

also reflected at the governmental level, for example through a

major revision of the laws on soil conservation and through a

parliamentary resolution that substantially increased the public

funds available in the 1980s for ecosystem restoration and for

promoting methods of sustainable land management.

After 1990 the prevailing methodology driving governmen-

tal ecosystem restoration practices was substantially changed.

Instead of the previous top-down approaches, the governmen-

tal agencies responsible for soil conservation and forestation

adopted new participatory strategies for their restoration

measures. Furthermore, instead of continuing to promote the

use of agronomic methods, the agencies increasingly adopted

the ecosystem approach in their restoration activities. Today,

governmentally driven ecosystem restoration projects are

based on strong stakeholder involvement and participatory

approaches throughout the project lifetime and preferably

afterwards as well.

In recent years the diversity of restoration projects has

increased significantly, with a stronger focus on multiple inte-

grated outcomes. Their goals are, for example, related to raising

awareness about how soil conservation and the processes

driving climate change are inevitably interconnected and how

to enhance the socioecological resilience of degraded ecosys-

tems to increase the livelihood of local communities. Currently,

a number of restoration partnership programmes and projects

exist, managed by governmental agencies, NGOs or as independ-

ent projects funded by the state and by businesses. There follows

a short description of the main programmes. A complete summa-

tion of all restoration measures was published in a report titled

‘Ecological Restoration in Iceland’, released in 2011.

Farmers Heal the Land (FHL) is a cost-shared governmental

restoration programme established by SCSI in 1990. It is based

on collaboration between farmers and SCSI. It is the largest

programme of its kind, with around 600 participants working

individually on lowland restoration projects at their own farm-

steads. The programme was established to increase rangeland

restoration and improve grazing management; however, its

main underlying target was to ease cooperation and build

mutual trust between farmers and SCSI, as this had been

perceived by the correspondence as lacking. The programme

provides direct and indirect incentives to participants in the

form of minimum subsidy payments and regular in-person field

visits by restoration experts located at the nearest extension

SCSI office. The FHL programme has facilitated the restora-

tion of approximately 300 km

(3 per cent) of degraded areas

below 400 m elevation. Furthermore it has substantially eased

communications and strengthened trust between SCSI and

farmers, as hoped for in the beginning. The majority of the

farmers practise restoration to extend the size of grazing land.

Participants also claim that the restoration of degraded lands

is their moral responsibility; to ‘pay the debt to the land’ and

return it to their descendants in a better condition than it was in

Image: Hreinn Óskarsson

Natural colonization of birch woodlands in the Hekla forest area

Successful restoration of birch woodlands in Goðaland south Iceland. The

remnants of birch woodlands were protected from grazing in 1925 by IFS

iving

and