UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

South America’s Atlantic Forest may not be as famous as its neighbor, the Amazon. But it exceeds it in two important respects: the extent of the degradation it has suffered, and the huge effort underway to restore it.

The Atlantic Forest once covered a vast swath of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. But it has been reduced to fragments by centuries of logging, agricultural expansion and urbanization, including the growth of cities like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

Hundreds of organizations are active in the Atlantic Forest Pact and the Trinational Network, a decades-long effort to protect and restore the forest in all three countries. Their initiatives are creating wildlife corridors for endangered species, like the jaguar and the golden lion tamarin, securing water supplies for people and nature, countering and building resilience to climate change, and creating thousands of jobs.

Dugongs, the dolphin-like creatures that ancient seafarers may have mistaken for mermaids, are a barometer of the health of our oceans. Where conditions allow these charming marine mammals to thrive, corals, turtles and myriad other species can too.

Safeguarding the world’s second-largest dugong population is a goal of the drive in the United Arab Emirates to restore beds of seagrass, the vegetarian dugong’s preferred food, coral reefs and mangroves along the Gulf coast.

The initiative in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi will improve conditions for many other plants and animals, including four species of turtle and three kinds of dolphin. Local communities will benefit from the revival of some of the 500 species of fish, as well as greater opportunities for eco-tourism.

Abu Dhabi wants to ensure its coastal ecosystems are resilient in the face of global heating and rapid coastal development in what is already one of the world’s warmest seas.

The Great Green Wall is a spectacular bid to restore savannas, grasslands and farmlands across the breadth of Africa. It’s designed to help families and nature cope with climate change and keep the Sahara from spreading deeper into one of the world’s poorest regions.

Launched by the African Union in 2007, this flagship has grown from a tree-planting drive into a comprehensive rural development initiative. It wants to transform the lives of millions in the Sahel region by creating a mosaic of green and productive landscapes across 11 countries.

While the Great Green Wall targets degraded land stretching right across the continent, this World Restoration Flagship has a particular focus on Burkina Faso and Niger.

Growing insecurity in this region is adding to the urgency of countering environmental degradation, which can fuel conflict and displacement. Despite the challenges, restoration initiatives are succeeding, for instance by encouraging farmers to harvest water, let trees regenerate naturally and adopt sustainable farming techniques. Animals, like giraffes, are also returning to restored areas.

Population growth, industrialization and irrigation have degraded the Ganges River along its arcing 2,700-kilometre course from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal. Climate change poses a grave additional threat.

Launched in 2014, the government-led Namami Gange initiative has invested in waste management and water treatment, while raising public awareness and engaging communities in ecosystem conservation and restoration.

The flagship is reforesting parts of the Ganges basin and promoting sustainable farming. It also aims to revive key wildlife species, including river dolphins, softshell turtles, otters and the hilsa shad, an important food fish.

Restoring the Ganges, India’s most sacred river, is expected to bring a wide range of benefits to millions of people living in its vast basin and safeguard their deep spiritual and cultural connection with its waters.

Mountain regions face unique challenges in a changing world. Climate change is melting glaciers, eroding soils and driving many species toward extinction. And the water that mountains supply to farms and cities in the plains below is becoming unreliable.

This flagship showcases initiatives in three diverse regions that are making mountain ecosystems more resilient so they can support both people and unique upland wildlife.

In the volcano-studded Virunga Massif, endangered mountain gorillas have made a comeback in the protected areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda. Tourists attracted by these iconic and endangered apes provide welcome revenue for authorities and communities in poor and densely populated areas next to the parks.

In Kyrgyzstan, herders are managing grasslands more sustainably so that they provide better food for both livestock and Asiatic ibex. Other wildlife is also profiting from two new protected areas. Snow leopards, which prey on the ibex are making a comeback.

In Serbia, authorities are expanding tree cover and revitalizing pastures in two protected areas, and plan to expand and upgrade them to national park status. Brown bears have returned to the forests, where restoration is also helping ecosystems recover from wildfires.

Focused on three small island developing states, this flagship will scale up ridge-to-reef restoration of unique ecosystems and tap blue economic growth to help island communities rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Across the archipelago of Vanuatu, restoration goals include reducing pressures on coral reefs, home to an array of sea life, so that fish stocks can recover. This is supporting coastal communities, where many make their living off the sea.

In the Comoros, restoration is helping communities to improve their incomes by managing the resources of four protected areas more sustainably. Ecosystems under restoration include seagrass beds, coral reefs, mangroves and forests.

On Saint Lucia, restoring mangroves and seagrass beds protects coastal areas used for sea moss cultivation and supports fish stocks. Communities are being empowered to produce charcoal sustainably and earn alternative income from eco-tourism and beekeeping.

As well as creating a "toolbox" of solutions for sustainable island development, this flagship also aims to amplify the voice of island nations facing rising sea levels and intensifying storms as a result of climate change.

Like many grasslands around the world, the vast steppes of Central Asia are in decline due to factors like overgrazing, conversion to arable land and the shifting climate.

In Kazakhstan, the Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative has been working since 2005 to restore steppe, semi-desert and desert ecosystems within the historic range of the saiga, a once abundant antelope critically endangered by hunting and habitat loss.

As well as reviving and protecting the steppe, the initiative has helped conserve wetlands that are a vital stopover for an estimated 10 million migratory birds each year.

The saiga are key to the health of the grasslands. Coupled with initiatives to balance the needs of wildlife and livestock, restoring the steppe supports the livelihoods of traditional herders and protects against wildfires. Local communities in this thinly populated region are also benefitting from the creation of hundreds of jobs in several new protected areas.

Exposed to heatwaves and unpredictable rainfall, the ecosystems and peoples of the Central American Dry Corridor are some of the most vulnerable in the world to climate change. As recently as 2019, a fifth year of drought left 1.2 million people in the region needing food aid.

Tapping traditional farming methods to build the productivity of whole landscapes, including their biodiversity, in these tough conditions is at the heart of this restoration flagship covering six countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.

For example, planting trees along with crops like coffee, cocoa and cardamom can boost soil fertility and water availability, while sustaining much of the biodiversity of the original tropical forest.

The flagship aims to scale up restoration by putting lessons learned from on-the-ground initiatives to work across the region, and by building financial support for sustainable rural development that can counter land degradation, poverty and emigration.

Demak, a low-lying coastal community in Java, has been plagued by erosion, flooding and land loss caused by subsidence and the felling of a nearby protective belt of mangroves.

Rather than replanting mangrove trees, this innovative UN flagship has built fence-like structures with natural materials along the shore to calm waves and trap sediment, creating conditions for mangroves to rebound naturally.

In return for letting mangroves regenerate, farmers have been schooled in sustainable techniques that have increased their shrimp production. With mangroves providing habitat for a host of marine organisms, fishers have also seen their near-shore catches improve.

Central to this flagship is bringing engineers and other specialists together with non-government organizations and communities to tailor solutions to local conditions – an approach ripe for replication in other locations.

China’s Shan-Shui Initiative is hugely ambitious, comprising 75 large-scale initiatives to restore ecosystems from mountains to coastal estuaries right across the world’s most populous nation.

Launched in 2016, the initiative results from a systematic approach to restoration. Projects dovetail with national land use plans, work at the landscape or watershed scale, include agricultural and urban areas as well as natural ecosystems, and seek to boost multiple local industries. All include goals for biodiversity.

Examples include the Oujiang River Headwaters Project in Zhejiang province, which integrates scientific knowledge with traditional farming methods, like slope terracing and combining crops with fish- and duck-rearing to make land use more sustainable.