Some 252 million hectares across 149 countries – an area of land and sea roughly the size of Kazakhstan – arecurrently under restoration, making this the largest documented effort of its kind to date. More than one million green jobs have also been created in the process.

“Today, we are witnessing the makings of one of the largest movements for nature in recorded history,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Stepping it up

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

Nature’s comeback - Scaling ecosystem restoration for people and planet comes at the halfway point for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which runs through 2030.

The report assesses progress on a global commitment to restore around one billion hectares of land – roughly the size of China – by the end of this period and ensure that 30 per cent 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 acceleration, particularly in freshwater, marine and coastal ecosystems. Annual funding for restoration also needs to increase more than fourfold from $64 billion to $296 billion – an investment that could create up to 32 million jobs worldwide by 2030.

‘Restoration works’

“Five years into the UN Decade, the message is clear: restoration works,” said Dongyu Qu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which co-published the report alongside UNEP and the UN biodiversity secretariat.

“The challenges are to make restoration an integral part of the sustainable management of land, water and natural resources, and to have a coherent transformation of agrifood systems.”

Natural bounce

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

Research suggests that restoring just 15 per cent of global priority areas could prevent 60 per cent of projected species extinctions while 30 per cent of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions could also be sequestered.

Yet progress is variable across ecosystems and countries. For example, restoration of terrestrial ecosystems has reached nearly half the 30 per cent target, but marine and coastal restoration has been far more limited.

The report said restoration must be sustained long enough to both enable ecosystem and biodiversity recovery while delivering lasting benefits for communities.

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

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