Nature is making a comeback – now restoration funding must be increased fourfold

A number of There are 252 million hectares of land spread across 149 countries – an area of ​​land and sea roughly the size of Kazakhstan – currently under restorationmaking it the largest documented effort to date. More than one million green jobs have also been created in this process.

“Today, we are witnessing one of the greatest nature conservation movements in history,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP).

Improve it

However, more action is needed to meet global restoration targets, UNEP and its sister agencies said in a report launched on Thursday at the COP17 biodiversity conference in Yerevan, Armenia.

Nature’s return – Enhancing ecosystem restoration for people and planet comes at the midpoint for UN Decade on Ecosystem Restorationwhich lasts until 2030.

The report assessing progress on the global commitment to restore around one billion hectares of land – roughly the size of China – by the end of this period and ensuring that 30 percent of the world’s ecosystems are under conservation, in line with a 2022 agreement known as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

For this to happen there must be rapid accelerationespecially in freshwater, marine and coastal ecosystems. Annual funding for restoration would also need to more than quadruple from $64 billion to $296 billion – an investment that could create up to 32 million jobs worldwide by 2030.

‘Restoration successful’

“Five years into the UN Decade, the message is clear: restoration efforts,” said Dongyu Qu, Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (F.A.O), who co-published the report with UNEP and the UN biodiversity secretariat.

“The challenge is to make restoration an integral part of sustainable management of land, water and natural resources, and carry out a coherent transformation of the agri-food system.”

Natural bounce

Helping nature to bounce back is critical for food and water security, climate resilience, jobs and prosperity.

Research shows that restoring just 15 percent of global priority areas could prevent 60 percent of estimated species extinctions while 30 percent of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions can also be absorbed.

But progress varies across ecosystems and countries. For example, land ecosystem restoration has reached almost half of the 30 percent target, but marine and coastal restoration is still much more limited.

The report states that restoration must be sustained long enough to allow the recovery of ecosystems and biodiversity while providing long-term benefits to society.

“We cannot hope to improve nature with one hand while we destroy it with the other,” said Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

“Governments must address the causes of ecosystem degradation and invest in monitoring mechanisms to ensure the resilience of the restoration movement to date.”