WeForest
From early on, transparency and accountability have been central to its approach. Over the years, WeForest has built collaborations with more than 450 partners, helping funders see how their contributions connect to restoration work on the ground. A key part of this approach has been to map restoration projects and funding contributions to specific project locations, hectares and numbers of trees, making the work visible and easier for partners to understand and follow.
This same philosophy applies to how WeForest measures restoration success. Its approach to Forest and Landscape Restoration goes far beyond counting trees planted. WeForest monitors ecological and social change to understand whether restoration activities are contributing to healthier forests, stronger livelihoods and more resilient landscapes.
In Ethiopia, WeForest works in the Desa’a Forest landscape, one of the country’s oldest remaining dry Afromontane forests. The landscape has been severely affected by land degradation, grazing, wood collection, soil erosion and increasingly difficult climatic conditions.
The restoration programme combines assisted natural regeneration, enrichment planting, soil and water conservation, community engagement and livelihood activities.
Understanding whether these activities are leading to longer-term ecological and social change is therefore essential, not only for WeForest’s teams, but also for the partners funding the restoration.
Representing the complexity of WeForest’s restoration work
But restoration rarely works in such a simple, linear way.
One activity may contribute to several outputs and outcomes. An outcome may depend on a combination of ecological and social interventions. The same indicator may provide evidence for more than one objective, while external factors such as rainfall, grazing pressure, community participation or implementation conditions can influence the results.
For example, assisted natural regeneration may contribute to vegetation recovery, soil protection, biodiversity and water retention. At the same time, its success may depend on local agreements, grazing management and continued community participation.
The challenge was therefore not to replace WeForest’s monitoring methodology. It was to make the connections within it easier to see and understand.
- Retain the project information and indicators already in use;
- Show the relationships between activities, outputs, outcomes and impact;
- Show multiple connections instead of forcing each element into a single pathway;
- Connect project-level results with WeForest’s wider strategic goals;
- Make the full logic of the restoration programme easier to explore;
- Support learning, management and communication.
Translating WeForest’s monitoring framework into an interactive Theory of Change
Together with the WeForest team, OpenForests reviewed and reorganised this information within explorer.land’s Interactive Theory of Change.
Our approach to Theory of Change and impact monitoring has been shaped through our ongoing collaboration with Wyss Academy for Nature. Together, we have worked on translating conservation strategies into practical monitoring frameworks and co-developing tools that help organisations connect their activities, indicators and evidence.
Structuring the existing monitoring information
This matters because each level represents a different stage of change. Keeping them separate makes it easier to understand how one step is expected to lead to the next.
Activities describe what the project implements. Outputs describe the immediate results of that work. Outcomes describe the changes expected to emerge. Impact refers to the broader ecological and social objectives to which the project contributes.
Keeping these levels separate helps avoid presenting completed activities as evidence of long-term impact before that change has been observed.
Mapping multiple connections across the results chain
An activity can be connected to several outputs. An output can contribute to different ecological and social outcomes. Several activities may also need to work together before a particular outcome becomes visible.
This gives WeForest a clearer picture of how change is expected to happen across the project. Instead of showing only that one indicator relates to one result, the dashboard can represent how:
- several activities contribute to the same outcome;
- one intervention supports different strategic objectives;
- ecological and social results influence one another; the same indicator can provide evidence in different parts of the Theory of Change;
- short-term results connect with longer-term change.
This reflects the reality that forest restoration is a system of interacting interventions rather than a series of isolated actions.
Connecting indicators to the Theory of Change
Indicators are assigned to the relevant goals of the results chain: Output indicators record their direct and immediate results. Outcome indicators provide evidence of emerging change. Impact indicators relate to long-term ecological and social objectives.
This structure helps WeForest see where progress is happening and where a closer look may be needed.
For example, when an activity has been implemented but its expected output is weaker than anticipated, project teams can investigate implementation conditions.
When the planned outputs have been delivered but the expected outcome is not yet visible, teams can ask a series of practical questions: Does the change simply need more time? Is the indicator measuring the right thing? Are external factors affecting the result? Does the assumed relationship need to be reconsidered? Or is more evidence needed?
explorer.land’s Impact Monitoring module therefore complements WeForest’s monitoring methods by making the relationships between indicators and expected change easier to follow.
Aligning the project with WeForest’s strategic goals
For example, an intervention may contribute simultaneously to forest health, biodiversity, soil and water conservation, community resilience or sustainable livelihoods. Rather than assigning the intervention to only one category, the Theory of Change can retain these multiple relationships.
A clearer view of how restoration activities contribute to impact
WeForest can now see how its restoration activities in Desa’a are expected to lead to long-term change, and which indicators provide evidence for each step.
OpenForests’ impact monitoring tools help WeForest derive even more value out of years of rigorous monitoring data, connecting sources into a unified picture of our Theory of Change. Our strategic partnership with OpenForests underscores our long-standing commitment to transparency, giving our funding partners a clearer, more credible line of sight from their contribution to the long-term project impact.
Tariq El Haj Omar – Chief Growth Officer, WeForest
Existing monitoring work, kept and organised
WeForest’s activities, results, indicators and impact dimensions now sit in one structured Theory of Change, and its monitoring methodology stays the same.
Connections made visible
Activities, outputs, outcomes and impact are linked across multiple pathways, and each indicator is attached to the result it is meant to assess.
Project linked to strategic goals
Work in Desa’a connects to WeForest’s organisation-wide impact dimensions, which makes assumptions and monitoring gaps easier to spot.
Forests: Reasons to be hopeful with Marie-Noëlle Keijzer
What the WeForest case demonstrates
Many restoration organisations already monitor rigorously, but their logframes present change as a straight line, even though activities, outcomes and indicators overlap and influence each other.
- already have a logframe or indicator set and want to build on it, not start again.
- run projects where one intervention contributes to several ecological and social outcomes.
- need to show funders how project-level results connect to your wider impact goals.
