Q&A: Arun Dayanandan Explores Plantation Forests’ Role in Global Restoration Strategies
Arun Dayanandan is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate at Yale School of the Environment (School of Forestry & Environmental Studies) and a student fellow with the Law, Environment & Animals Program (LEAP) at Yale Law School. His dissertation investigates how plantation forests might function as active agents in global restoration strategies. Drawing on his fieldwork conducted across tree plantations and natural forests in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia, he is integrating empirical data with models of regeneration dynamics and functional diversity to develop an evidence-based global framework for measuring restoration success.
Building on his M.Sc. in animal cognition and his current doctoral research in tropical forest restoration, Dayanandan approaches forest management through theoretical, applied, and ethical lenses. His work addresses what he identifies as a critical gap in prevailing restoration metrics, arguing that meaningful ecological recovery must be assessed through indicators of functional and structural complexity and long-term successional dynamics. In this view, plantation forests should be evaluated not just as units of production, but as dynamic systems whose value for restoration depends on measurable ecological processes.
LEAP Research Assistant Sarah Jeddy interviewed Dayanandan about his research.
Can you tell me a little bit about your work and how you came to this field of study?
I’m a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate at Yale School of the Environment under the mentorship of Professor Mark Ashton’s Silviculture and Forest Ecology Lab, and my work focuses on plantation forests across the global tropics. I work in South America, West Africa, and Southeast Asia, studying tree plantations in each of those regions, where I’m comparing what’s regrowing beneath these plantations, across different management systems and in different ecological contexts, with nearby natural forests in the same areas.
When I say “plantation forests,” I mean large-scale, commercially managed tree plantations. Sometimes they’re monocultures, sometimes mixed-species systems, but they’re typically established for timber, pulp and/or paper production. Increasingly, though, they’re being pulled into conversations around restoration and climate policy, mainly because they are a dominant land use across much of the planet. That’s where my main question comes in: how can we rethink plantations from more of a conservation perspective while still maintaining their productive role on the landscape, for both human and non-human stakeholders?
How can we rethink plantations from more of a conservation perspective while still maintaining their productive role on the landscape, for both human and non-human stakeholders?”
A lot of current restoration reporting relies heavily on canopy cover or carbon accumulation. While these are important to measure, they don’t necessarily tell us whether a forest is moving toward greater structural or compositional complexity. So I’m interested in what’s happening underneath the canopy such as what species are regenerating, how diverse those communities are, and whether these systems are progressing along meaningful successional pathways. This ties directly into governance, so I also look at how land tenure, rotation-length, and ownership structures shape what happens on the ground. Those decisions ultimately influence light availability, disturbance patterns, and recruitment dynamics, which in turn affect understory development, wildlife populations, and long-term restoration potential. In other words, our management and policy choices directly shape the ecological trajectories of these forests.
There are also emerging incentive mechanisms, such as biodiversity credits and carbon credits, that are meant to encourage protection of these landscapes. From a biodiversity perspective, that can be beneficial for wildlife and for rare plants and wildlife. But it also matters for local communities. In many of the places where I work, certain plants have spiritual uses, and particular forests hold spiritual significance. So I’m thinking about alternative land-use strategies that can account for ecological function, cultural meaning, and economic production at the same time.
Can you tell me a little bit more about your work with plantation farms?
I work on commercial-scale tree plantations of many different kinds, not just monocultures. These plantations are our primary source of pulp, paper, and timber worldwide. In fact, since the mid 1980s, we’ve shifted toward relying more heavily on planted forests rather than on natural forests, with much of our pulp, paper, and timber coming from tropical regions. A significant share of the wood and paper products that we use, even in North America, originates in tropical plantations.
These landscapes now represent a major global land use, and they’re not going anywhere. We will continue to rely on wood and paper, and there are strong economic incentives, both international and domestic, that sustain plantation forestry in these regions. Given their scale and persistence, my approach has been to work with plantations rather than against them. I start from the premise that they are here to stay, and then ask how we can better characterize and manage them.
From there, the question becomes: what more sustainable land uses can be implemented within these landscapes? Ideally, these approaches would be beneficial across multiple dimensions, e.g., economically, reputationally, materially, culturally, and ecologically. Since these plantations are so widespread, even incremental changes in how they are managed would have meaningful environmental and social consequences.
How do you pick which sites to research?
A big part of my decision-making is going where plantation forestry is happening at large scale. If we’re thinking seriously about meaningful change, it has to occur at scale. It’s certainly valuable to improve management in smaller sites for a variety of reasons, but right now I’m particularly interested in how these large, commercial-scale plantation systems can be made more sustainable. So I consider where the “wood baskets” of the world are i.e., those regions that produce most of the global pulp, paper, and timber supply. In South America, I work in Brazil; in West Africa, I work in Ghana; and in Southeast Asia, I work in Vietnam.
It’s also important to recognize that many of these plantations are established on lands that are already degraded. In many cases, these areas have been used for centuries. The soils may be eroded, seed banks depleted, and natural forests heavily fragmented from long-term human use. Plantations are not always displacing intact forests; sometimes they are one of the few viable land uses remaining under the current conditions. In that sense, I look for where plantations can function as an important intermediate stage between completely degraded land and the possibility of more structurally complex forest systems.
Another thing I factor in is collaboration. The companies operating in these regions are often willing to work with researchers, which is something people don’t always realize. That openness makes it possible to conduct research that is both scientifically rigorous and practically relevant.
In short, the site selection reflects both an applied focus and a strategic one: identifying places where incremental changes, implemented at very large scales, could make a meaningful difference both locally and globally.
You have a pretty positive interpretation of plantation forests. What would you say are some common misconceptions or myths about them?
One of the biggest misconceptions is that plantations are typically established by clear-cutting intact natural rainforests. That does happen in some contexts, and it’s important not to dismiss those cases. But in many of the regions where I work, plantations are established on lands that have already been degraded, often cleared decades or even earlier for agriculture or livestock. By the time tree plantation companies enter, these landscapes may already have experienced prolonged soil erosion, seed bank depletion, and forest fragmentation.
In Ghana, for example, plantation conversion follows a strict, government-regulated definition of what qualifies as a forest. Once an area falls below a threshold of what is considered a “healthy” forest due to legal and illegal harvesting, it is designated for conversion to a tree plantation. The model used there often involves mixed-species plantings under a Modified Taungya System. Plantation tree saplings are interplanted with locally-used staple crops for the first three years, functioning initially as an agroforestry system. Once the planted trees form a closed canopy, the system transitions into a plantation. Local community members then tend the trees to maturity and receive a significant portion of the income generated from harvest and sale. So the idea that plantations are always replacing lush, intact rainforest isn’t necessarily accurate, and in many cases is not economically viable.
At the same time, I want to be careful not to generalize too far in the other direction. Not all plantations are managed the same way. Different companies operate under different incentive structures, and those incentives are not always aligned with the well-being of local communities or wildlife. Those risks are real and should be taken seriously in any restoration narrative.
The more productive question is not whether plantations are inherently good or bad, but under what ecological and governance conditions they can contribute to structural complexity, wildlife return, and long-term ecosystem stability.”
But for me, the more productive question is not whether plantations are inherently good or bad, but under what ecological and governance conditions they can contribute to structural complexity, wildlife return, and long-term ecosystem stability. If we can identify those conditions and demonstrate real-world successes with partner companies, then I’m confident we can encourage more equitable and ecologically sound practices across the sector.
Another misconception is that plantation companies are unwilling to collaborate on conservation. In my experience, many are open to working with researchers and local or international partners. However, because plantations are often framed as the adversary in environmental debates, there can be hesitation among conservationists to engage with them. That reluctance can limit opportunities for improving outcomes in landscapes that, whether we like it or not, are going to remain a major part of global forest management.
You've talked a lot about how companies are very willing to work with people in terms of managing ecological diversity. What patterns have you found across governance regimes or management practices that help shape species diversity and ecosystem function?
The first thing I would say is that management is always local. Even though these plantations can be very large and tied into global markets, they sit within specific land-use histories. Each region has its own legacy of Indigenous land use, colonial land use, agricultural expansion, fragmentation, etc., and those histories shape what is possible today. So, governance and management decisions have to operate at a local scale, even within these massive globally connected industries.
In eastern Ghana, where I do part of my work, there’s a public–private partnership model in place. Local communities own a substantial share of the standing value of the plantation forest and receive a significant portion of the income from harvest. The government acts as a broker, managing logistics, marketing, and sales. Through the Modified Taungya System, the local community also uses the land for agriculture during the early years of tree growth, and also relies on the forest for non-timber forest products and spiritual purposes.
In Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, by contrast, most land is privately owned, so management operates through a different ownership model and requires coordination across parcels and collaboration among landowners if the goal is to maintain broader ecosystem function.
In other words, the different institutional and governance structures translate into ecological structures. But there are still common threads: One is the importance of understanding local land-use legacies. Another is the mosaic nature of these landscapes. Because of fragmentation and different ownership structures, plantations often exist alongside pasture, secondary forest, agriculture, and remnant native forest. It’s like a quilt of different land uses all stitched together!
To that end, what would it mean institutionally or legally in terms of designing restoration standards or market mechanisms of some kind that would recognize animals, for example, as critical components of ecosystem recovery?
I think biodiversity credits are a major example, because they’re already on the table as an emerging market and people are actively debating what they should look like. But in terms of what it would actually take to build standards or mechanisms that recognize animals as part of recovery, I think it has to be a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches.
Management has to happen locally. Every place has its own social, cultural, and economic values that determine what restoration can realistically look like, and those details matter if you want standards that are meaningful rather than just symbolic. At the same time, especially when you’re dealing with international markets and large plantations, you also need top-down policy mechanisms. Private interests are certainly part of the picture, but so is the need for policies that ensure land use benefits not only international companies, but also the people who bring local knowledge and live with the consequences of how these landscapes are managed. So I see it as a balance: top-down policies and mechanisms that can create structure and accountability, while still leaving room for the fact that restoration is implemented in very local, context-dependent, bottom-up ways.
Markets have to be stable for anyone to invest in long-term restoration. One of the recurring problems, not just with plantations but in agriculture more broadly, is that when markets are unstable, the rational response is to focus on short-term returns: cash crops, fast-growing annuals, and anything that maximizes income quickly. The downside is that it removes the incentive to invest in the longevity of the land itself. If you’re forced into short time horizons, ecosystem services, maintenance of biodiversity, and long-term ecological function become secondary. This isn’t necessarily because people do not value them, but because the market structure pushes them toward short-term survival and short-term value extraction.
That’s where governments and policy can come in, and it’s also where market-standardizing organizations, like Verra, can matter. Their role, as I see it, is to create and assure a certain level of market stability. When that stability exists, it becomes easier for land managers and companies to think longer-term, and that longer-term framing is always better for biodiversity, including animals, because it makes investments in habitat structure and ecological complexity more viable.
In some ways, this also connects to how many Indigenous communities have historically managed forest resources, including through swidden agricultural systems: you harvest some areas and leave others fallow, which allows forests to regenerate and reseed. It worked, in part, because human pressure on the forest was lower than it is today. It’s much harder to implement now, because it requires a lot of land and a view of land use that goes beyond one-year markets or four-year election cycles. It forces us to think in generational cycles — in terms of whether our children and grandchildren will benefit from the same landscape. And to me, that’s the institutional and legal challenge: designing standards and market mechanisms that make that kind of long-term thinking possible, and that treat biodiversity not as an optional add on, but as part of what successful recovery looks like.
Can you tell me a little bit more about the decision to study the Atlantic Forest instead of the Amazon in Brazil?
It’s true that when people think of South America, they tend to think of the Amazon. There are a couple of reasons I focus instead on the Atlantic Forest.
First, in the Amazon, we still have large areas of relatively intact tropical rainforest. “Intact” is a broad term in and of itself and certainly open to debate, but the point here is that the Amazon has not, to the same extent, been deforested and degraded to the same level. The Atlantic Forest presents a very different situation. It has less than 16 % of its original forest cover remaining, and what persists exists mostly in small, isolated fragments. It is also home to over a third of South America’s people and was the region where Portuguese colonists first made landfall. So it has a long and intensive history of land conversion and agricultural use that differs significantly from much of the Amazon.
At the same time, the Atlantic Forest remains extraordinarily biodiverse. It contains more than 20,000 plant species and around 2,400 vertebrate species, the majority of which are found nowhere else on Earth. So we’re talking about a highly threatened system that is also exceptionally rich in rare and endemic species.
That combination of severe fragmentation alongside high biodiversity is one of the main reasons I work there. Even in the former rubber plantations where I conduct research, wildlife is everywhere. We encounter species like coati and armadillos regularly, and there are mountain lions in the area as well. We rarely see them directly, but camera traps confirm their presence — there are at least fifteen individuals in the specific landscape where I work. They generally avoid us when we’re measuring trees, but their presence underscores how much ecological complexity still persists in what are thought of as “Green Deserts.”
And that’s just the more visible fauna. There are also whole communities of plants, invertebrates, amphibians, and other taxa, with new species described regularly. Just last year, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew announced that one of the top 10 species discoveries of 2025 was a spider-parasitizing “zombie” fungus, within the Ophiocordycipitaceae family, found in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. Discoveries like that highlight how much we are still learning about these ecosystems.
In many ways, there is actually less time for the Atlantic Forest than for the Amazon. There is simply less of it left. That urgency makes it a particularly important landscape for thinking about restoration, successful management, and the possibility of rebuilding ecological function under dire conditions.
You've had the opportunity to go to the Atlantic Forest and visit a lot of these sites. What is that experience like? What do you actually do in the field?
Fieldwork looks different for everyone, but for me it begins with collaboration. I work with longstanding partners at local universities and herbaria, including scholars who trained at Yale School of the Environment and returned to Brazil and Ghana. They connect us with local field technicians, botanists, and people who have previously worked in the planting, harvesting, and clearing of the plantations. Many of them have deep, place-based knowledge of the land, and that knowledge is essential. They help us navigate these forests in ways that would be impossible otherwise.
On the ground, the work is systematic. We establish fixed-area forest plots and inventory everything within them. I identify and count plants across size classes, from seedlings to saplings and up through to the canopy trees. The goal is to capture the full vertical structure of the forest, not just the dominant overstory. That means documenting natural regeneration as well as mature individuals.
After collecting the field data, I use statistical models to characterize diversity, structure, and composition. I situate those diversity measures within a successional framework to evaluate whether particular stands are progressing toward greater structural stratification and compositional stability over time. I compare natural forests and plantation forests, and even within plantations I compare different management regimes. In the Atlantic Forest sites, for example, there were areas undergoing active reforestation interventions. I measured those as well, to assess how effective those practices were and whether adjustments might improve ecological outcomes. And I note and photograph anything I come across — birds, insects, fungi, animal tracks — as you never know what information will be important down the road.
In your work, you discuss the difference between a plantation forest serving as a successful catalyst and a ghost forest (tree plantations that expand canopy cover but remain empty of animal life). What do you think makes the difference between those two?
I approach that question through successional theory. Over the past century, there have been back-and-forth, sometimes heated debates between academics and practicing foresters about how forests grow and change over time. Because forests operate on time scales that extend well beyond individual lifespans, much of that work has focused on identifying recognizable stages of development and asking how management can gently nudge a forest in a particular direction. The endpoint isn’t singular; what we hope to achieve can vary. But the question remains: how do we guide forest development toward greater structural and functional integrity?
That’s where species composition, wildlife presence, and physical structure all matter. Which plant species are present? Are there animals that disperse seeds? How much light reaches the forest floor? When I compare a “ghost forest” with a more mixed-age, structurally complex forest, the differences are visible in the layers. A complex forest has multiple strata: understory, subcanopy, canopy. It contains individuals occupying all of those layers, and species that enter and exit at different points in the forest’s life cycle. Some tree species may persist in the understory for decades, waiting for canopy gaps to open before they grow. But they can only do that if the system has been structured to allow those trajectories in the first place.
Managing these forests is like assembling a puzzle. You have to consider which species establish first, which persist, which depend on others, and how to maintain a balance that allows for long-term structural and functional complexity. The core focus, for me, is whether the system is advancing along a successional continuum toward a multi-layered, self-sustaining state, or whether it remains locked in a simplified condition.
Generally, greater structural complexity supports more wildlife and provides more ecosystem services. Animals hold functional roles — like seed dispersal, herbivory, and predation — that reinforce forest dynamics. Plants sustain these animal populations, herbivores support carnivores, and over time the trophic interactions become layered and interdependent. In a ghost forest, those interactions are limited or non-existent.
Vietnam provides a clear example. The country has undertaken a major federal reforestation program aimed at increasing national canopy cover using commercial plantation species. By satellite imagery, it appears highly successful, with Vietnam having one of the largest increases in canopy cover in Southeast Asia. But when you move beneath that canopy, that picture changes. Many of these forests have minimal understory and subcanopy development. They have limited habitat complexity, fewer places for animals to shelter, and fewer opportunities for understory species to establish.
At the same time, the country’s commitment to reforestation is real. The signal from both government and local communities is that they truly care about restoring healthy forests. That creates an opportunity. If the focus can shift from canopy alone to structural and functional complexity, then those same efforts could move from producing ghost forests toward catalyzing successful self-sustaining ecological systems and serve as a model of success to other parts of the world.
Suppose you've identified what needs to be there. What does that actual process of nudging look like? Is that an introduction of certain samples?
That’s where management comes in. And I often describe it as gardening, because there isn’t just one approach. It depends on the system and what stage of succession it’s in.
One option is enrichment planting. That means identifying particular species that we know should be present. Maybe some species that naturally grow under the canopy would take a century or more to establish on their own, so we help them along. We collect seeds, grow them to the seedling stage in a nursery so they have a higher chance of survival, and then plant them into the forest or under other faster-growing canopy species. In that sense, we’re accelerating a process that might otherwise decades to centuries.
But nudging doesn’t always mean planting. Sometimes it’s about cutting or thinning. If competition is too high, reducing stem density can allow light to reach the forest floor and enable seeds already present in the soil (the “seed bank”) to regenerate naturally. Often, what we’re really doing is creating what ecologists and foresters call “growing space,” adjusting light, moisture, and competition levels so conditions more closely resemble what specific target species require to establish.
At the same time, we have to recognize the limits of our control. Ecosystems are far more complex than we fully understand. We can add fertilizer or manipulate light regimes, but ultimately the plants grow themselves. In tropical systems especially, some species cannot be stored as seed because they rot; they have to germinate in situ from the soil seed bank. So interventions have to be carefully calibrated to the biology of the species involved. Sometimes we introduce nitrogen-fixing species to facilitate others. Sometimes the intervention is minimal. But conceptually, it is gardening at a landscape scale.
One common misconception is that non-intervention is always the most ecologically-sound choice. Sometimes it is. But in many degraded systems, doing nothing can result in lower biodiversity and poorer outcomes for both wildlife and people. The Atlantic Forest provides a useful example: in heavily degraded areas, if land is cleared and left alone, bracken ferns often dominate. These ferns grow extremely quickly and to be much taller than I am and form dense mats that can persist for very long time periods. They create fire-prone conditions and block light from reaching the forest floor, which means seedlings can’t establish, and seeds in the soil eventually rot without ever germinating. So in this case, passive restoration, i.e., just leaving the land alone, actually locks the system into a low-diversity state. Active management such as enrichment planting and thinning, when done carefully, can help move a system out of those arrested states and back onto a healthier successional trajectory.
What reforms to carbon markets or biodiversity credits, or even plantation certification, do you think would be most urgent or pressing to ensure that restoration actually delivers climate benefits and also protection for animal communities?
For me, the foundational issue is market stability, especially in carbon markets. Right now, carbon credits are the canary in the coalmine. If carbon credits succeed, biodiversity credits have a much higher chance of succeeding. If we cannot convince investors, corporations, and other participants that carbon markets are stable enough to invest in, then biodiversity credits will likely fail as well.
So the first reform I would point to is actually public understanding and public honesty about what these credit markets are and what they can realistically do. If we turn credits into a race to the bottom by making carbon credits available for almost anything, then we risk undermining trust in the entire system. And once that trust is lost, that is probably the biggest danger, because it becomes much harder to rebuild credible markets.
Of course, markets also have to contend with technical issues like additionality, leakage, and permanence. But even there, I see them as tied back to stability and credibility to keep these markets from becoming purely reputational instruments rather than ecological ones.
And then there’s the restoration side of all this, which is where certification and biodiversity credits become really important. Without ecologically rigorous baselines and criteria, you can end up classifying structurally simple plantations as “restoration successes,” even if they have limited long-term recovery potential and limited value for animal communities. If the standards do not explicitly require structural complexity and the kinds of habitat features animals depend on, then markets can reward outcomes that look good on paper or from satellite imagery, but do not deliver meaningful ecological recovery on the ground.
So if I had to summarize: we need to protect market credibility through stability and transparency, and we need to protect ecological credibility through baselines and standards that are rigorous enough to measure real recovery, including the return and persistence of animal communities, and the valuation of co-benefits. This requires everyone — all hands on deck — from social scientists, to public communicators and journalists, to come to the table.
Do you feel confident about the future of plantation forest work?
I do, with a healthy dose of pragmatism. Carbon credits, biodiversity credits, and other certification systems are tools, but they are only one set of tools within our much larger toolbox. Restoration does not have to succeed solely because it is economically incentivized. In many places, there is also genuine interest among communities, practitioners, and governments in seeing ecological recovery occur for its own sake. So as long as we remain clear that these mechanisms are options rather than singular solutions, I’m optimistic.
There are multiple ways to approach the shared challenge of restoring forests globally, so I won’t say that plantations are a universal solution. They are one land-use form among many, and their place in restoration policy should depend on measurable ecological outcomes, not aspirational labeling. If we can maintain that standard by focusing on structure, function, and long-term recovery rather than surface metrics, then I think plantation forests can play a strong role in broader global restoration efforts. My role, as I see it, is to contribute the empirically grounded criteria that help us distinguish between plantations that remain as simplified systems versus plantations functioning as successional catalysts that advance global restoration.
