Restoration Covers 149 Countries, Creates Over 1 Million Jobs
Ecosystem restoration is now under way on 252 million hectares of land and ecosystems across 149 countries, a new United Nations report has found. The work has also created more than one million green jobs, and the report calls it the largest ecosystem restoration campaign ever documented.
The report, “Nature’s Comeback: Scaling Ecosystem Restoration for People and Planet,” was issued on Thursday. The Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Environment Programme, and the Biodiversity Convention Secretariat jointly published it. Its launch took place at a senior-level event held during the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP17).
The report says efforts must speed up to reach the targets set for 2030. Freshwater sources, marine systems, and coastal ecosystems require particular attention. It also notes that yearly restoration financing needs to grow by more than four times its present level. Such investment, it estimates, could support around 32 million new jobs globally by 2030.
The document arrives at the midpoint of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, covering 2021 to 2030. It is the first worldwide review of restoration commitments. The report evaluates progress toward a pledge to restore nearly one billion hectares, and toward the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Under that framework, at least 30 per cent of degraded terrestrial, freshwater, marine, and coastal ecosystems should be brought into effective restoration by 2030.
At the COP17 event, five initiatives from China, Colombia, Ethiopia, Italy, and the United States were honoured as UN World Restoration Flagships. They were recognised as strong examples of successful ecosystem recovery.
UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said, “Today we are witnessing the start of one of the largest movements for nature in recorded history.” She added that nature is still not being restored at the required scale or pace, even though the Decade has reached its halfway point. Inspirational projects, she said, must become widespread efforts by 2030, and economies must move toward safeguarding remaining natural areas and repairing damaged systems.
The global movement to restore nature now reaches well beyond national programmes. Cities, schools, businesses, and community organisations are taking an active role. Since the start of the UN Decade, more than 300 organisations from all regions of the world have joined its partnership network.
FAO Director-General QU Dongyu said, “Five years into the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the message is clear: restoration works.” He added that the next step is to make restoration a core part of managing land, water, and natural resources sustainably, along with coordinated shifts in agrifood systems. Healthy ecosystems, he said, deliver better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and better lives for everyone, ensuring that no one is left behind.
The report explains that ecosystem restoration is essential for food and water security, the ability to withstand climate change impacts, job creation, and human well-being. Asia records the largest share of restoration area, at 192.2 million hectares. Africa follows with 36.3 million hectares, Europe with 9.1 million, North and Central America with 5.8 million, South America with 5.4 million, and Oceania with 3.2 million.
The report clarifies that these figures cannot be used to rank regional performance, since they also reflect differences in restoration scale, regional land size, and monitoring and reporting capabilities. Research cited in the report shows that restoring 15 per cent of the world’s priority areas could absorb and store up to 30 per cent of the carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions produced since the Industrial Revolution, and could help prevent 60 per cent of species extinction events.
Successes under the UN World Restoration Flagships include improved status for species such as mountain gorillas in East Africa, jaguars in Brazil, snow leopards in Kyrgyzstan, and the Ganges river dolphin in India. The report also notes that restoration progress varies across countries and ecosystems. For terrestrial ecosystems, almost half of the global target to bring 30 per cent of degraded land under restoration by 2030 has already been met.
China has reported the largest terrestrial restoration area, at 127.4 million hectares. Substantial restoration work has also been recorded in Mongolia and Kazakhstan.