Global ecosystem restoration reaches 252 million hectares, creating over one million jobs

A global effort to restore degraded ecosystems has reached 252 million hectares across 149 countries, generating more than one million green jobs, according to a new United Nations report. The findings represent the largest documented global restoration effort to date, but the UN says progress remains insufficient to meet international commitments to reverse nature loss by 2030. The report, Nature’s Comeback – Scaling Ecosystem Restoration for People and Planet, warns that governments must significantly increase restoration efforts, particularly in freshwater, marine, and coastal ecosystems, and more than quadruple annual investment. It estimates that scaling up restoration financing could create as many as 32 million additional jobs worldwide by 2030.

Published midway through the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030), the report provides the first comprehensive global assessment of progress towards commitments to restore approximately one billion hectares of degraded land and ecosystems. It also examines progress towards the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework target of placing at least 30% of degraded terrestrial, freshwater, marine and coastal ecosystems under effective restoration by 2030. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) jointly produced the report. It was launched at a high-level event during the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP17), where the UN recognised five restoration initiatives in China, Colombia, Ethiopia, Italy and the United States as UN World Restoration Flagships. UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said the growing restoration movement demonstrated that countries and communities were…