Youth-led landscape restoration
How forest restoration led by young people in the Intag Valley is improving incomes and promoting productive reforestation, sustainable agriculture and innovations in agroecology and technology.
The youth team from Corporación Toisán carry out soil analysis using refractometers (Photo: Valeria Villalva, Corporación Toisán)
The Intag Valley, located in Ecuador’s Imbabura province, is an ecosystem of incalculable environmental value inhabited primarily by mestizo and Afro-descendant communities. However, this territory has faced intense pressure from agricultural expansion, deforestation and severe soil degradation. This has not only put biodiversity at risk but also directly threatened the food sovereignty and water sources of entire families.
From 2020-25, with support from Forest and Farm Facility (FFF), the Toisán Corporation managed to coordinate a comprehensive response at the landscape scale. The corporation was founded in 2005 with the aim of defending and conserving a biodiverse territory and ensuring the rights of future generations.
Forest and Farm Facility activities
FFF’s technical and financial support to the Toisán Corporation enabled direct strategic intervention across 164 hectares, including sustainable agriculture, productive reforestation, strengthening agri-food chains and hydrological systems, and sustainable production managed entirely by young people.
This effort strengthened the governance and conservation of the Intag-Toisán Municipal Area for Conservation and Sustainable Use, a protected region covering over 100,000 hectares in the Cotacachi area of Imbabura province.
Restoration in Intag was cultivated from the ground up. A local expert group of ten pioneering farmers was formed, which, together with their children, led 60 agroecological replication workshops on 30 neighbouring farms. On these plots, 148 young people participated in hands-on workshops and basic permaculture courses.
The project provided the farms with bio-inputs and technical equipment (such as refractometers and reagents for onsite soil analysis). Additionally, the innovative Keyline methodology – a hydrological system that ensures efficient water retention and soil restoration, vital for adapting to droughts – was implemented on nine of the farms.
Significance of impact
The central theme and greatest achievement of this initiative is the generational transition. Of the 196 people (97 men and 99 women) involved, 99 are young people under the age of 30 who are now leading the region’s climate-resilience efforts.
With FFF funding, a group of 20 young people was trained in the use of cutting-edge technologies, taking on the monitoring of biodiversity and micro-watersheds using drones, camera traps, weather stations and micro-turbines.
Productive reforestation has shown conserving forests is fully compatible with economic development, with many young people learning how to improve their economic situation without harming nature. In addition, the 99 women participants, in coordination with the Intag Women’s Coordinating Committee, strengthened their economic autonomy by leading ecotourism and bioenterprise initiatives.
Conclusion
These efforts would not have been so effective for the Toisán Corporation without FFF support. Today, the corporation is a national leader in participatory land management.
The youth of Intag have found in technology, agroecology and reforestation a powerful reason to stay in their territory, ensuring forest landscapes continue to flourish for future generations.
Further reading
News: FAO/Ecuador ancestral practices for climate action, United Nations Media (2025)
Video: Results of the Forest and Farm Facility in Ecuador, FAO (2026)