UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 was conceived as a means of highlighting the need among nations to drastically increase efforts to restore degraded and destroyed ecosystems to combat climate change, and enhance biodiversity, food security, and water supply.

UN rationale for ecosystem restoration

An ecosystem includes all living organisms, including plants and animals, as well as their interaction with each other and their physical environment (such as earth, soil, climate, atmosphere, and weather). Each organism plays a key role and contributes to the health and productivity of the ecosystem as a whole. Ecosystems are interdependent and damaged or imbalanced ecosystems can have devastating and far-reaching consequences. Biodiversity underlies all ecosystem services, which are the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems and they are indispensable to the health, survival and wellbeing of people worldwide. They include provisioning services (food, freshwater, wood and fibre, and fuel), regulating services (such as climate, disease, food regulation, and water purification), and cultural services (such as aesthetic, spiritual, educational services).

Human activities are drastically reducing the capacity of ecosystems to provide their goods and services. Climate change, deforestation, desertification and land degradation, freshwater decline, overexploitation, stratospheric ozone depletion, and pollution are some of the many drivers leading to biodiversity loss and declines in ecosystem functioning. Unless these problems are addressed, the benefits future generations can obtain from ecosystems will diminish drastically.

The degradation of land and marine ecosystems through human activities fuels fears of a mass species extinction, has a negative impact on the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people, and it costs about 10% of the annual global gross domestic product (around $6.3 trillion) in loss of species and ecosystems services. In addition, degradation reduces the resilience of agricultural land and ecosystems to climate change, which enhances the risk of catastrophic collapse in the face of rising temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns.

Ecosystem restoration seeks to repair some of the damage humans have done to ecosystems and biodiversity. It assists the recovery of degraded, damaged and destroyed ecosystems to regain ecological functionality and provide goods and services of value to humans. The UN Decade will focus on landscapes of interacting land uses where ecological, social and developmental priorities can be balanced, and it aims to ensure the resilience of landscapes in the long term.

Ecosystem restoration can generate tangible benefits which will increase food and water security, contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation, and help address associated risks such as conflict and migration. Restoration of 350 million hectares of degraded land between now and 2030 could generate US$9 trillion in ecosystem services and remove 13 to 26 gigatons of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. In general, the benefits obtained from ecosystem generation exceed the costs of the initial investment tenfold, whereas the cost of inaction is at least three times the cost of ecosystem restoration.

History of the UN Decade

During the Bonn Challenge 3.0 high-level meeting in March 2018, El Salvador indicated its intention to seek the proclamation of the “UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration 2021 – 2030”. Immediately following the proposal speech to the United Nations General Assembly by El Salvador’s Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Lina Pohl, 71 co-sponsors showed their support to enhance efforts to restore degraded ecosystems. On the 1st March 2019, the UN Decade was officially adopted by the UN General Assembly.

El Salvador had shown leadership on ecosystem restoration through pledging to the Bonn Challenge, which aims to restore 350 million hectares of degraded ecosystems globally by 2030 – an area almost the size of India, and through endorsing the New York Declaration on Forests. It has been one of the six pilot countries taking up the Bonn challenge and it pledged to restore 1 million hectares, equivalent to half of the country’s territory.

According to Minister Lina Pohl “Ecosystem restoration promoted through this UN Decade takes a multi-functional landscape approach, looking at the mosaic of interdependent land uses in which ecological, economic, social, and development-based priorities can find convergence, balance and complementarity."

Opportunity and aims

Around 2 billion hectares of degraded lands worldwide, an area larger than South America, has potential for ecosystem restoration. Most of this could involve “mosaic restoration”, where forests are combined with protected areas, agriculture, waterbodies, and human settlements on a landscape scale.

Strong commitments and efforts by countries, the international community, civil society, private sector and other actors are needed to achieve transformational ecosystem restoration. This involves the restoration of at least 350 million hectares of degraded landscapes by 2030, realizing up to $9 trillion in net benefits and alleviating poverty in many rural communities. In a holistic manner, the interdependencies of ecosystems, human needs and biodiversity through a landscape approach of ecosystem restoration will be addressed. This will provide the pace that is needed to maintain and restore ecosystems.

The UN Decade was established to address:

• Build a common vision where ecosystem restoration is a priority from the global to the local level, accelerating the reversal of degradation across ecosystems
• Mainstream ecosystem restoration in policies and plans to address current developmental challenges due to land degradation, biodiversity loss, and climate change vulnerability
• Facilitate a holistic view of how to achieve different international commitments and national priorities through the restoration of ecosystems and landscapes
• Enhance cooperation and resource mobilization to increase the flow of financial resources, technologies, knowledge and capacity building to countries and jurisdictions seeking to achieve international commitments, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and national goals through the implementation of ecosystem restoration
• Support an increased number of partnerships and investments in favour of smallholders who generate the most significant value from land use products and who can make a considerable contribution to the restoration of ecosystems in the context of a resilient economy.
• Promote concerted commitment between financing sources, governments, civil society, productive sector, and private sector to address the factors that prevent scaling up resource-efficient productive systems while restoring degraded ecosystems.
• Raise awareness on the importance of having functional ecosystems for human well-being and productive activities and the relevance of ecosystem restoration

Links to other UN and internationally agreed targets

Ecosystem restoration is recognized to be a key component to achieve targets of existing international conventions and agreements, including the SDGs , the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2020 and its Aichi Biodiversity Targets , the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification and the Land Degradation Neutrality target , the Ramsar Convention, and the UN Strategic Plan on Forests 2017 – 2030.

During a High Level Political Forum on the SDGs in July 2018, commitments were made to sustainably manage of all types of forests, halt deforestation, restore degraded forests and substantially increase afforestation and reforestation globally by 2020 (Paragraph 27 of the HLPF 2018 Ministerial Declaration ).

These activities were also designed to contribute to the Bonn Challenge. In general, ecosystem restoration will contribute to the SDGs and Agenda 2030, particularly SDG15 (Life on Land) and significantly support the achievement of SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 14 (Life Below Water).

The UN Decade builds on regional restoration efforts such as the Initiative 20x20 in Latin America that aims to restore 20 million hectares of degraded land by 2020 , and the AFR100 African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative that aims to bring 100 million hectares of degraded land under restoration by 2030. These initiatives fall under the same movement towards restoration as the Bonn Challenge.

Resolutions relevant to ecosystem restoration

Resolutions relevant to ecosystem restoration that were passed during United Nations Environment Assemblies (UNEA) include UNEP/EA.1/L.08 Ecosystem-based adaptation , UNEP/EA.2/L.24 Combating desertification, land degradation and drought and promoting sustainable pastoralism and rangelands , and UNEP/EA.3/L.10 Addressing water pollution to protect and restore water-related ecosystems. During the fourth session of UNEA, which was held 11 - 15 March 2019, the following solutions highlight the importance of restoration: UNEP/EA.4/L.11 Innovations on biodiversity and land degradation, UNEP/EA.4/L.19 Conservation and Sustainable Management of Peatlands, UNEP/EA.4/L.14 Sustainable coral reefs management, and UNEP/EA.4/L.13 Sustainable Management for Global Health of Mangrove

Key bodies and partners

UN Environment and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) will lead the implementation of the UN Decade; other key bodies and forums involved are the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF). They will partner with other UN agencies, bodies and convention secretariats, as well as with international and indigenous organisations to support the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration.

External links

• Restoring Forests and Landscapes: The Key to a Sustainable Future
• Assessment Report on Land Degradation and Restoration
• Global Environment Outlook