Native Plant Conservation Campaign News: United Nations - Declares Decade to Highlight Urgency of Restoration of Native Ecosystems
March 6, 2019
Healthy diverse native plant communities and ecosystems produce and deliver
Ecosystem Services that are essential to the health, quality and sustainability of human life (NOTE: an updated and expanded Ecosystem Services section of the NPCC web page will soon be online).
As ecosystem degradation has accelerated, these services are increasingly at risk. In
response, on March 1, the United Nations declared that the decade of 2021-30 would be a Decade of Ecosystem Restoration.
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, declared today by the UN General Assembly, aims to massively scale up the restoration of degraded and destroyed ecosystems as a proven measure to fight the climate crisis and enhance food security, water supply and biodiversity.
The degradation of land and marine ecosystems undermines the well-being of 3.2 billion people and costs about 10 per cent of the annual global gross product in loss of species and ecosystems services. Key ecosystems that deliver numerous services essential to food and agriculture, including supply of freshwater, protection against hazards and provision of habitat for species such as fish and pollinators, are declining rapidly.
“We are pleased that our vision for a dedicated Decade has become reality,” said Lina Pohl, Minister of Environment and Natural Resources of El Salvador, a regional restoration leader. “We need to promote an aggressive restoration program that builds resilience, reduces vulnerability and increases the ability of systems to adapt to daily threats and extreme events.”
The Decade will accelerate existing global restoration goals, for example the
Bonn Challenge, which aims to restore 350 million hectares of degraded ecosystems by 2030 – an area almost the size of India. Currently 57 countries, subnational governments and private organizations have committed to bring over 170 million hectares under restoration. This endeavor builds on regional efforts such as the
Initiative 20x20 in Latin America that aims to restore 20 million hectares of degraded land by 2020, and the
AFR100 African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative that aims to bring 100 million hectares of degraded land under restoration by 2030.
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