Africa has 36.3m hectares under restoration – UN

Africa accounts for 36.3 million hectares of land and ecosystems currently under restoration across the world, as the United Nations has called for a major increase in funding and faster action to meet global biodiversity targets by 2030.

The UN disclosed this in a new report titled Nature’s Comeback: Scaling Ecosystem Restoration for People and Planet, obtained by Saturday PUNCH on Friday, which found that 252 million hectares across 149 countries are being restored, supporting more than one million green jobs.

However, the report warned that global restoration efforts were not progressing fast enough to meet commitments, particularly in freshwater, marine and coastal ecosystems.

It said annual restoration financing would have to increase more than fourfold, from $64bn to $296bn by 2030, to achieve the targets, adding that the investment could generate up to 32 million additional jobs worldwide.

The report, jointly published by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the UN Environment Programme and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, was released on Thursday at the ongoing UN Biodiversity Conference (COP17) in Yerevan, Armenia.

It provides what the organisations described as the first comprehensive global assessment of progress towards commitments to restore around one billion hectares and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework target of placing at least 30 per cent of degraded terrestrial, freshwater, marine and coastal ecosystems under effective restoration by 2030.

According to the report, Asia accounts for the largest documented restoration area, with 192.2 million hectares, followed by Africa with 36.3 million hectares, Europe with 9.1 million hectares, North and Central America with 5.8 million hectares, South America with 5.4 million hectares and Oceania with 3.2 million hectares.

The report cautioned that the figures should not be interpreted as a ranking of restoration performance, explaining that they reflect the scale of restoration activities, regional land area and countries’ capacities to monitor and report progress.

It, however, identified significant gaps in the restoration of aquatic ecosystems, which it said were among the fastest-degrading environments.

Only 11 million hectares of freshwater ecosystems and 5.7 million hectares of marine and coastal ecosystems across 62 and 46 countries, respectively, were documented as being under restoration.

The report noted that inadequate reporting could mean the figures underestimate the actual scale of restoration activities in these ecosystems.

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It added that the proportion of countries reporting implemented wetland restoration or rehabilitation programmes had increased from eight per cent in 2022 to 54 per cent.

Reacting to the findings, the Executive Director of UNEP, Inger Andersen, said although the world was witnessing one of the largest movements for nature in recorded history, restoration was still not happening at the scale and speed required.

“At the halfway point of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, we are still not restoring nature at the scale or speed required. By 2030, we must turn inspiring initiatives into systemwide action shifting to restoration economies that protect what remains and restore what has been degraded,” she said.

The Director-General of FAO, Qu Dongyu, said restoration needed to become an integral part of sustainable land, water and natural resource management, as well as the transformation of agrifood systems.

“Healthy ecosystems are vital for better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life for all, leaving no one behind,” he said.

The report said restoring priority ecosystems covering just 15 per cent of identified global priority areas could capture and store carbon equivalent to 30 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions released since the Industrial Revolution and help prevent 60 per cent of projected species extinctions.

It identified agroforestry, restorative reforestation, peatland restoration and seagrass restoration as areas requiring substantial investment, with estimated annual funding needs of $87bn, $52bn, $44bn and $28bn, respectively.

The Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Astrid Schomaker, called on governments to address the drivers of ecosystem degradation and strengthen monitoring mechanisms to ensure restoration efforts deliver lasting results.

“We cannot expect to fix nature with one hand while we destroy it with the other one,” she said.

The report also stressed that restoration programmes must secure land tenure, ensure meaningful community participation and respect the rights, knowledge and leadership of Indigenous Peoples and other rights-holders.

It said the next phase of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which runs from 2021 to 2030, should move beyond isolated projects towards sustainable restoration economies capable of supporting ecological recovery, livelihoods and long-term environmental benefits.