China's size worth of degraded land needs restoration globally

The UNEP and FAO warned that mankind needed to restore at least one billion hectares of degraded land in the next decade if it wants to avoid biodiver

 China's size worth of degraded land needs restoration globally

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• The story: Mankind needed to restore at least one billion hectares of degraded land in the next decade if it wants to avoid biodiversity loss. This was projected in the report by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) (June 2021).
• Overshooting: The report added that the world was using 1.6 times the amount of services that nature could provide. It noted that conservation efforts alone were insufficient to prevent large-scale ecosystem collapse. These ecosystems include farmlands, forests, grasslands and savannahs, mountains, peatlands, urban areas, freshwaters and oceans. Communities living across almost two billion degraded hectares of land include some of the world’s poorest and marginalised.
• Conserving ecosystems: The conservation of healthy ecosystems — while vitally important — is now not enough. We are using the equivalent of 1.6 Earths to maintain our current way of life and ecosystems cannot keep up with our demands. Simply put, we need more nature.

1. The global terrestrial restoration costs — not including costs of restoring marine ecosystems — are estimated to be at least $200 billion per year by 2030. The report outlined that every $1 invested in restoration creates up to $30 in economic benefits.
2. Ecosystem restoration is the process of halting and overturning degradation, resulting in cleaner air and water, extreme weather mitigation, better human health and recovered biodiversity, including improved pollination of plants.
3. The report added that degradation is already affecting the well-being of an estimated 3.2 billion people — that is 40 per cent of the world’s population. Every single year, we lose ecosystem services worth more than 10 per cent of our global economic output.

• Inherent strength: The good news is that nature has an extraordinary capacity for renewal. While some ecosystems are approaching a tipping point from which they cannot recover, many others can flourish again if we stop the damage and restore their health, biodiversity and productivity. It also brought to the fore the importance of restoring productive ecosystems for supporting food security. The report noted:
• Agroforestry: Restoration through agroforestry alone has the potential to increase food security for 1.3 billion people. Restoring the populations of marine fish to deliver a maximum sustainable yield could increase fisheries production by 16.5 million tonnes, an annual value of $32 billion. Actions that prevent, halt and reverse degradation can deliver one-third of the mitigation in global temperatures that are needed by 2030.
• UN Decade: The report was launched as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 got underway. The FAO and UNEP also launched the ‘Digital Hub’ for the UN Decade, which included the ‘Framework for Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring’. The framework enables countries and communities to measure the progress of restoration projects across key ecosystems, helping to build ownership and trust in restoration efforts. 

 

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