Ten initiatives from around the globe, which together aim to restore more than 68 million hectares of land and coastlines, have been recognized by the UN for their role in preventing and reversing the degradation of natural habitats across the planet.
The Western Peat Meadows of the Netherlands look like classic Dutch countryside (cows, windmills and green fields), but the views mask a significant loss of biodiversity, caused by intensive farming methods. As the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration begins, a local organisation is planning to restore 100 million of hectares of land, across the world.
Heads of Government, religious leaders, activists and artists joined the United Nations on Friday in a rallying cry to heal the planet, launching the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
Amidst the triple environmental threat of biodiversity loss, climate disruption and escalating pollution, Secretary-General António Guterres launched “an unprecedented effort to heal the Earth”, on the eve of World Environment Day.
Sustainability is not new: communities have been living in harmony with their surroundings for hundreds, if not thousands of years. As the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration begins, the UN is celebrating some of the most remarkable agricultural systems found around the world.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is leading a push for the world to scale up efforts to restore landscapes and forests over the next decade, with eyes on a target to salvage 350 million hectares of degraded and deforested lands, an area bigger than India in total.