The REMM Project is coordinated under the umbrella of the Trees For Development project.
In response to the accelerating climate change and socio-ecological crises, an unprecedented political will has emerged to engage in ecological restoration (ER) to repair damaged and degraded landscapes. International pledges, including the UN’s Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) and the Bonn declaration have set targets to restore vast areas of degraded land across the world.
In Madagascar and Mozambique, the potential for ER is high with committed governments and international funding increasingly targeted to ER. Despite the potential, initial research suggests that many ER reports may worsen climate change-induced vulnerabilities, social precarities, and ecological conditions. Research has only started to emerge on the impact of the global ER pledges and flows of capital from the global North to the South on the communities where the projects are implemented. Skillful local professionals are the link needed for the planning and implementation of the ER activities between the global funding and communities at ER sites. Thus, there is a need to educate such future experts in Madagascar and Mozambique to face the multifaceted challenges of ER, with state of the art knowledge in multidisciplinary ER research. REMM aims to address this gap through research and educational collaboration among Finland, Madagascar and Mozambique. It is a joint initiative of the University of Helsinki, Hanken School of Economics, University of Antananarivo (UoA, Madagascar) and Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UEM, Mozambique). The main objectives are to support international collaboration between partner institutions and to enhance the holistic teaching of ER.
REMM is funded by the Team Finland Knowledge (TFK) programme aiming to create and strengthen cooperation between Finnish higher education institutions and the selected target regions and countries of the TFK network as well as to develop new operating models for this cooperation ( see more TFK programme).