Why a UN Campaign?
"We call on the General Assembly of the United Nations to pass a resolution declaring 2010-2020 the International Decade for Restoring the Earth and to begin a co-ordinated global effort among countries, organisations and individuals to restore damaged ecosystems and habitats."
We are calling for a UN resolution because there is an urgent need to promote restoration. As the UN’s comprehensive GEO-4 report says: "Land degradation ranks with climate change and loss of biodiversity as a threat to habitat, economy and society".
The environment faces multiple challenges as a result of human activity – climate change resulting from the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, air pollution resulting from emissions of sulphur, nitrogen oxides and smoke, increasing shortages of water and other natural resources. These challenges are linked and need to be addressed in a holistic, joined-up, way, with restoration playing a key role.
The UN has already passed a convention on climate change – the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and governments have joined to create conventions on conserving species (the Convention on Biological Diversity); trade in endangered species (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species – or CITES) ; and on the specific area of wetland restoration –(the RAMSAR convention). What’s missing is a treaty or convention on the wider issue of ecosystem or ecological restoration, covering the restoration of forests, cropland, rivers, coral reefs and other land or sea-based ecosystems. The resolution we seek is a first step to creating such a convention.
Ecosystem restoration is part of the effort to tackle climate change because it restores the natural systems that absorb and recycle carbon instead of releasing it to the atmosphere. The loss of natural forests around the world contributes more to global emissions each year than the transport sector. Curbing deforestation is a highly cost-effective way to reduce emissions.
This was recognised when environment ministers met in December 2007 at Bali. They were unable to agree on key issues such as global targets for reducing emissions, but they did sign up to a declaration which encouraged countries to explore ways of reducing emissions from deforestation . They also agreed a plan to help countries adapt to climate change where it is already happening or inevitable, including tackling desertification and other damage caused by climate change in developing countries – in other words, ecological restoration.
Given the potential of ecosystem restoration, now is the time to raise its profile, make people more aware of what it can achieve, press governments to invest in it and enable citizens to contribute to it. Please join this campaign.