Regional Forest Landscape Restoration Initiatives
Regional initiatives on forest landscape restoration bring together countries that share borders, ecosystems, and economies to collaboratively restore their degraded forest and deforested landscapes. Regional initiatives support countries with attracting finance to support common restoration efforts, fostering leadership and building countries` profiles in responding to global challenges, and with exchanging knowledge and best practices. The most appropriate restoration objectives and strategies will depend on local social, economic and ecological contexts and needs, as well as on national and global goals.
Caucasus and Central Asia countries face challenges with degradation and overutilization of forest areas. Forest policy and decision makers are not always aware of international initiatives and the opportunities they offer for their own countries. The forest landscape restoration approach under the Bonn Challenge umbrella provides an overall framework to enhance national restoration efforts and regain forest services to benefit people and nature in the region.
ECCA30 regional initiative seeks to bring 30 million ha of degraded and deforested land in Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia into restoration by 2030. The initiative aims to reinforce regional cooperation to achieve the Bonn Challenge global goals, facilitate access to technical and financial support and foster capacity building on forest landscape restoration.
ECCA30 seeks to make a tangible regional contribution to the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, to accelerate the implementation of Land Degradation Neutrality and land and forest-based targets towards achieving the objectives of the Paris Agreement, and to drive progress across multiple Sustainable Development Goals.
Furthermore, ECCA30 seeks to help countries receive international and regional recognition of their restoration ambitions connected to their domestic priorities and projects. This initiative is serviced jointly by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Bank (WB).
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The UNECE and FAO Joint Forestry and Timber Section supports countries of the region by providing a platform for policy dialogue, capacity building and knowledge exchange for forest landscape restoration. High-level ministerial meetings have been organised in the UNECE region to build regional alliances and reinforce political will to restore landscapes and attract new pledges and funding.
The Ministerial Roundtable on Forest Landscape Restoration and the Bonn Challenge for the Caucasus and Central Asia region (held in Kazakhstan in 2018) was the first opportunity to align national and regional efforts in the Caucasus and Central Asia with the global Bonn Challenge. Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan committed to restore over 2.5 million hectares of forest landscape by 2030. Azerbaijan joined the initiative in 2019, bringing the region’s commitments to restore degraded land to approximately 3 million ha.
The Astana Resolution, adopted during the Ministerial Roundtable, declares the commitment of Caucasus and Central Asia countries to scale up forest landscape restoration activities, to cooperate among interested partners to develop a strategy for the financing of forest landscape restoration efforts and reinforce national capacities in order to better mobilize existing financial instruments, and to strengthen partnerships and regional cooperation to this end.
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The Ministerial Meeting on Forest Landscape Restoration and the ECCA30/Bonn Challenge in Eastern and South-East Europe (held in October 2021) strengthened political commitment and enhanced collaboration on forest landscape restoration within this region. The meeting provided an opportunity for the Eastern and South-East European countries to join, contribute and reinforce global communities’ efforts within the Bonn Challenge. Countries of the region took bold action by committing to restore more than 4 million ha of degraded land by 2030 under the global Bonn Challenge.
The Meeting also adopted the ECCA 30 Ministerial Declaration to reinforce countries’ commitments to accelerate their restoration efforts by 2030.
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Read more on restoration of forests and landscapes in UNECE region here.
AFR100 – the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative is a partnership of 31 African governments and numerous technical and financial partners to bring 100 million hectares of land in Africa into restoration by 2030. It aims to accelerate restoration to enhance food security, increase climate change resilience and mitigation, and combat rural poverty.
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20x20 Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative in Latin America is a country-led effort seeking to change the dynamics of land degradation in Latin America and the Caribbean by beginning to protect and restore 50 million hectares of forests, farms, pasture, and other landscapes by 2030.
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Landscape Partnership Asia is a multi-stakeholder platform that will implement performance-based investments in the restoration of Asian drylands and drought-prone areas through networks of ‘engagement landscapes’ deploying evidence-based techniques. This initiative will link to other restoration initiatives – such as the Bonn Challenge, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ Asia-Pacific Forest Landscape Restoration.
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