Mapping Restoration Opportunity for Collaborating with Land Managers in a Carbon Credit-Funded Restoration Program in the Makana Municipality, Eastern Cape, South Africa

Spatial prioritization techniques are commonly used in conservation planning, but are relatively new for planning restoration programs. Typically, ecological data, and more recently data on economic costs and vulnerability of sites, are used. However, the effectiveness of restoration action ultimately relies on a combination of the appropriate ecological restoration techniques and the human and social dynamics of social-ecological systems. Surveys were conducted with 29 land managers within the Makana Municipality of the Eastern Cape, South Africa, to identify a range of human and social factors hypothesized to define the potential effectiveness of restoration action. Land managers with similar characteristics were grouped using a cluster analysis, and the groups ranked and mapped in geographical information system (GIS) to provide a spatial representation of restoration opportunity. The total number of questions were reduced by 35.6%, a step toward developing a rapid assessment approach for assessing land managers' potential participation in restoration initiatives. Identifying and incorporating human and social factors that directly influence restoration prioritization should promote efficient and effective implementation of restoration actions by the Working for Woodlands programme, who are looking to funding landscape-scale restoration through carbon trading.