Nature is making a comeback – now restoration funding must quadruple

From salmon spawning grounds in Canada to coral reefs in Indonesia, ecosystems around the world are being restored at an unprecedented rate.Some 252 million hectares across 149 countries – an area of land and sea roughly the size of Kazakhstan – arecurrently under restoration, making this the largest documented effort of its kind to date. More than one million green jobs have also been created in the process. “Today, we are witnessing the makings of one of the largest movements for nature in recorded history,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Stepping it upHowever, more action is needed to meet global restoration targets, UNEP and sister agencies said in a report launched on Thursday at the COP17 biodiversity conference in Yerevan, Armenia. Nature’s comeback - Scaling ecosystem restoration for people and planet comes at the halfway point for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which runs through 2030. The report assesses progress on a global commitment to restore around one billion hectares of land – roughly the size of China – by the end of this period and ensure that 30 per cent of the world’s ecosystems are under conservation, i...