The United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration has highlighted the importance of land and ecosystem restoration. However, this has led to an upsurge in mass tree-planting programs that often lack social-ecological perspectives. Consequently, several restoration-focused initiatives fail or have limited impact due to mismatches between species and sites, as well as low interspecific diversity. To address this issue, the Diversity for Restoration (D4R) online decision-support tool has been operationalised in India by ATREE and ‘The Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT’. D4R helps landowners and managers make informed decisions about which species to plant, taking into account site-specific conditions and restoration goals. The tool also predicts the suitable habitats of specific species for present and future climatic conditions using habitat suitability models. D4R provides site-specific recommendations for 250 Western Ghats species and will be extended to the Central Indian Highlands in 2025-26.

We also designed a series of postcards showcasing multi-functional native species recommended by the D4R tool. Each postcard includes a few notes on the species’ ecological role, uses, and restoration value. The postcards can be downloaded here.