Landscape restoration is both an environmental and socio-economic priority as it offers a pathway to generate more jobs, strengthen rural livelihoods and restore degraded landscapes. To build momentum around impacts of restoration, showcase cross-sectoral success stories, and design data-driven solutions for a restoration economy, WRI India, along with India Climate Collaborative (ICC) and Transform Rural India (TRI), convened ‘RESTORE 2025: The National Restoration Dialogues for Accelerating India’s Restoration Economy for a Harit Bharat.’ 

This national convening facilitated multistakeholder dialogues focused on creating awareness and discussing policy, finance and business models that limit large-scale restoration while showcasing innovative mechanisms – such as outcome-based finance, blended capital and Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and highlighted successful models and partnerships – such as from community-led agroforestry, sustainable agriculture, riparian restoration and value-chain development for targeted restoration. 

These proceedings synthesise discussions from the two days and present the emerging enablers for advancing India’s restoration economy, such as embedding restoration within development planning, mobilising diverse and patient capital, strengthening restoration enterprises and monitoring systems and placing communities at the centre of the restoration economy.