Looking back, looking ahead: Local perspectives on landscape changes and native‐tree restoration in Madagascar

Across sub‐Saharan Africa, tree‐based restoration efforts are dominated by exotic tree species due to their rapid biomass accumulation and short‐term economic returns. However, their limited contribution to biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has renewed interest in native‐tree restoration as a more sustainable strategy. Madagascar represents a pivotal case study given its high‐level commitment to counter accelerating deforestation rates and preserve its exceptional endemic biodiversity. Yet important knowledge gaps remain: studies rarely address community perspectives to examine the conditions shaping native‐tree restoration opportunities and constraints across forest biomes and time scales, linking past drivers, present states and future projections. Together, these elements would improve contextualization and reveal the timing, levers and barriers influencing restoration outcomes.

To address these gaps, we used 45 participatory mapping across three major forest biomes in Madagascar, structured around four horizons: the past decade, the present, and two 10‐year future scenarios representing business‐as‐usual and desired futures. This approach enabled us to examine perceived landscape changes, current restoration constraints and enabling conditions and locally envisioned pathways towards desirable futures.

Across biomes, participants linked current landscape outcomes to past agricultural expansion and charcoal production, with recurrent fire as a key mechanism driving landscape change. Under a business‐as‐usual scenario, native‐tree restoration was not a community priority, particularly in humid and transitional forests. While its ecological benefits are valued, this restoration was constrained by precarious livelihoods, insecure tenure and fears of stricter control over customary lands and resources. In contrast, the desired future scenario revealed an aspiration to double native‐forest cover on open lands, contingent upon the provision of livelihood‐compatible incentives, secure land rights and empowered local governance.

Overall, our findings demonstrated that demand for native‐tree restoration is shaped by the interaction between ecological goals, land rights and livelihood security. Native‐tree restoration outcomes depend not only on ecological priorities, but on how people envision the future of the landscapes they live in. Therefore, native‐tree restoration is most likely to succeed when designed as a negotiation of socially legitimate and multifunctional futures. Unless policies address these realities, native‐tree restoration efforts may remain ecologically ambitious but socially fragile.