Living Land

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when they received it. Economic factors do not play a substan-

tial role in that context; neither do governmental policies.

Regional afforestation projects are state funded and

implemented by farmers and landowners. The first regional

afforestation project was established by the state in 1991.

Later on it was followed by the establishment of comparable

projects in other regions of Iceland. Each project operates at

an individual level and runs its own regional advisory office.

Nevertheless, they work in close cooperation under the same

umbrella association. These projects provide maximum subsi-

dies to farmers and other landowners who want to practice

commercial forestry on their land, but they also support those

who want to practice forestry using only native species. The

projects are based on strong partnership and, in addition to

regular in-person field visits by experts from the regional

office, they offer participants a variety of forestry-related semi-

nars and courses. In total approximately 450 farmsteads are

currently participating in these projects.

The regional

Gróður fyrir fólk í landnámi Ingólfs

(GFF) NGO

was established in 1997. The main aims of the organization are

to halt soil erosion and ecosystem degradation in the vicinity

of Iceland’s capital city Reykjavik and adjacent towns, and to

enhance the ecosystem services these systems can provide to

increase the quality of life of inhabitants in the area. GFF uses

only organic residues, such as hay litter, livestock manure or

gurry in its restoration projects. The NGO is funded by the

state, local authorities, governmental agencies and various types

of business. The organizations work closely with school pupils

who take an active part in the restoration work and use it for

educational purposes. Furthermore, each year GFF coordinates

restoration activities practised by several groups of volunteers.

Substantial changes can be seen within the restoration areas but

the greatest success lies in the public awareness-raising that the

project has engendered since its establishment.

The United Nations University (UNU) Land Restoration

Training Programme was founded in 2007 by the Icelandic

Ministry for Foreign Affairs in partnership with the Agricultural

University of Iceland and SCSI. It was formally approved as a

UNU programme in 2010. The programme provides training

for specialists from developing countries in the field of ecosys-

tem restoration and sustainable land management, focusing

on strengthening institutional capacity and gender equality.

The fellows stay in Iceland for six months and get extensive

professional and vocational training, given by a large variety

of experts. Around 70 specialists from Africa and Asia have

already graduated with a diploma from the training programme.

The Mount Hekla forestry project was founded in 2007, with

the main objective to restore birch (

Betula pubescens

) wood-

lands near the active Mount Hekla. Only few hundred years

ago the Hekla forest area was mostly covered with extensive

birch forests and woodlands. Historical records show that

prior to settlement, deposits of volcanic ash and pumice from

eruptions in Mount Hekla were mostly stabilized on the forest

floor, preventing secondary distribution. After more than a

thousand years of farming in the area, both grazing and forest

clearing had devastated the woodlands and today the areas

near the Hekla volcano are some of the most severely degraded

ecosystems in Iceland. These areas are quite fragile with low

resilience, and ash deposits from nearby volcanoes such as the

active Mount Hekla cause heavy damage to the remaining vege-

Image: Hreinn Óskarsson

Volunteer groups plant birch seedlings in the Hekla Forest project

iving

and