In recent years, climate change has made extreme storms more common in El Salvador. They are especially devastating around the capital, San Salvador, where rampant construction and road-paving have created a concrete barrier that prevents rainfall from being absorbed into the ground.

Now, city officials and coffee farmers, with support from UNEP, have launched a project called CityAdapt to restore 1,150 hectares of forests and coffee plantations in order to revive San Salvador’s ability to absorb rainfall.

San Salvador is becoming a Sponge City: an urban area that is creating green spaces to tackle flooding. And it’s not the only one. Cities across the world, from Berlin to Wuhan, are pursuing this innovative strategy known as Ecosystem-based Adaptation.

Already, CityAdapt, which is funded by the Global Environment Facility, has helped around 16,000 people in San Salvador to reduce their risk of flooding. By the project’s completion in 2022, this number is expected to rise to 115,000.

Find out more about this inspiring project here.

As the COVID-19 pandemic shut down large parts of the world in what some scientists have called the andropause, many people noticed that they could hear the birds again -- in their streets, parks and gardens.

This year, World Migratory Bird Day on May 8 will focus on “bird song” and “bird flight” to inspire and connect people of all ages in a global effort to protect birds and the habitats they need to survive.

The theme this year is Sing, Fly, Soar -- Like a Bird! It represents an important moment to reflect on our own relationship with nature and to highlight our collective desire to do more to protect birds and nature in a post-pandemic world.

Migratory birds connect our world and we need to conserve and restore the ecosystems that our migratory birds rely on: that complex global network of sites they use to breed, feed, rest and overwinter.

Want to join in? There are loads of ideas of what you can do here and you can register your event here.

Join in with the hashtags #WMBD2021 #WorldMigratoryBirdDay #SingFlySoar #LikeABird #ForNature on your social media.

Check out the important work of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals here.

In 2022, UNEP turns 50, offering a chance to reflect on the past and imagine the future. That is exactly what UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen will be doing in an online event hosted by the Center for Governance and Sustainability at UMass Boston. Expect the discussion to look at the role UNEP has played in catalyzing environmental work within the United Nations and beyond, examine fresh challenges and explore new ways to deal with them.

When: 7 May, 2021 | 10-11 AM EDT

Where: Online, register here

Over the year that commemorates UNEP’s 50th anniversary, the Center for Governance and Sustainability at UMass Boston is convening a series of conversations with leaders who have shaped UNEP’s history. Guests will engage with the new book by Center Director Prof. Maria Ivanova, The Untold Story of the World’s Leading Environmental Institution: UNEP at Fifty.

Find out more about this event here. 

We know that we all have to step up if the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration is to succeed in preventing, halting and reversing the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and in every ocean. We are all part of #GenerationRestoration.

Already, young changemakers are showing the way. People like Niria Alicia Garcia, who was named a Young Champion of the Earth by UNEP last year for her work organising the annual Run4Salmon event in California alongside indigenous women and activists. The event aims to raise awareness about the plight of the Chinook salmon, which have reached critically low numbers.

Garcia, a graduate in environmental studies and a Xicana human rights advocate, says the Chinook are a keystone species, and sacred to the Winnemem Wintu people and many other indigenous communities from California to Canada and Alaska.

Read more about the Run4Salmon -- a two-week, 480-kilometre (300-mile) trek that follows the historical journey of salmon from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the McCloud River -- here.

Run4Salmon reinforces the need to get everyone on board as we seek to bring our societies and economies into harmony with nature. Check out our beginner’s guide to ecosystem restoration here for some more good ideas.

Find out more about the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

And get ready for the official launch of the decade on World Environment Day on June 5.

And for more inspiring stories, check out the other Young Champions of the Earth.

In a world dominated by the economics of profit and loss, it can feel difficult to make a sales pitch for protecting nature. Now, an innovative artificial intelligence (AI) tool aims to make it easier for countries to put a price on how much nature contributes to their economic prosperity and well-being.

Launched in April by the United Nations and the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), the new tool uses the Artificial Intelligence for Environment and Sustainability (ARIES) platform to support countries as they apply the new international standard for natural capital accounting, the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) Ecosystem Accounting.

The new tool is open-source and user-friendly and means that for the first time, rapid and standardized ecosystem accounting can be done anywhere. The ecosystem accounts will track the extent, condition and services provided by nature’s ecosystems – such as forests and wetlands – in the form of physical and monetary accounts and indicators.

The ARIES for SEEA Explorer is available on the UN Global Platform: a cloud-service environment supporting international collaboration among all countries in the world by sharing scientific knowledge, data, methods and technology.

Read more about the new tool here.

Wetlands are a perfect example of a nature-based solution that can help us cope with our climate emergency. Inland wetlands act like sponges, absorbing and storing excess rainfall and during dry seasons, they release the stored water. They also capture large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

These are exactly the kinds of habitats that we need to protect and restore during the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which kicks off on World Environment Day on June 5 but funding can be an obstacle when trying to scale-up such nature-based solutions.

In Kenya, a private estate, Marula Estates, funded a pilot project to restore around 10 per cent of original wetlands in the Naivasha area. The pilot helped rehabilitate 140 hectares, improving the area’s biodiversity. They would like to expand their work but funding is an issue.

Read more about the Kenyan project here.

There is growing recognition of the value of such nature-based solutions. UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report 2020 finds that since 2006, multilateral funds serving the Paris Agreement have backed around 400 climate adaptation projects in developing countries, half of which started after 2015. The majority focus on agriculture and water, with drought, rainfall variability, flooding and coastal impacts.

If you want to find out more about wetlands, explore UNEP’s Freshwater Ecosystems Explorer to get up-to-date data on the extent of freshwater ecosystems change over time.

These days, there is much talk about building back greener after the COVID-19 pandemic. But what does that mean? Part of the answer lies in sustainable infrastructure that is low-carbon, nature-positive and minimizes the sector’s environmental footprint.

Sustainable or green infrastructure can complement traditional grey infrastructure. For example, in Djibouti, where climate change has led to unpredictable rainfall, droughts and floods, the government, with support from UNEP and funding from the Global Environment Facility, built a 2 km-long dike to protect a neighbourhood in Tadjourah, a city on the Indian Ocean, from flood waters. A classic example of grey infrastructure.

This then led to the approval of a project to expand flood defences, notably by restoring mangrove forests on the coastline to reduce the height and strength of waves before they hit the shore. This is green infrastructure.

This combination of grey and green infrastructure is becoming more common as a way to adapt to climate change. UNEP is currently supporting over 45 such ecosystem-based adaptation projects around the world, aiming to restore around 113,000 hectares and benefit around 2.5 million people. These projects are what the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is all about.

Read more about the Djibouti project here.

Learn how the Global EbA Fund supports ecosystem-based adaptation here.

The word “ecosystems” can seem a little intimidating. What exactly does it mean? Now, you can find out for yourself by taking an immersive trip through some of the world’s most exciting ecosystems with UNEP’s Wild for Life virtual journeys. 

Take deserts and drylands. You probably think of them as barren, bleak even. But these areas are home to more than 2 billion people and host some of the world’s rarest biodiversity. They also play a vital role in climate regulation -- nearly 46 percent of global carbon is stored in drylands.

As part of its campaign to raise awareness ahead of the official launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, Wild for Life is offering a trip through three unique deserts: the rocky Gobi Desert in Central Asia; Wadi Rum in Jordan and the expansive Sahara Desert.

Or maybe you fancy checking out some of the other ecosystems in the series: mountains, peatlands, oceans, savannahs or forests? The aim is to show people how these ecosystems produce vital goods and services for humanity and to reveal the threats they face and, importantly, how you can help to protect them.

So why not embark on a special journey to mark your personal start to the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, which launches officially on World Environment Day n June 5?



Find out more about the Wild for Life virtual journeys here.

Did you know that forests cover one third of the earth’s land massand support the livelihoods of 1.6 billion people? They are also home to more than half the world’s land-based species of animals, plants and insects, combat climate change and buffer the impacts of storms and floods. Not to mention supplying drinking water for nearly half of the world’s largest cities, and providing shelter, jobs and security for forest-dependent populations.

It should be a no-brainer that we need to protect these vital reserves of life-giving services and yet every year, the world loses around 7 million hectares of forests, an area the size of Portugal. Globally, primary forest area has fallen by over 80 million hectares since 1990, according to the State of the World’s Forests report.

On April 27, the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF) -- a group of 15 international organizations including UNEP, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Bank -- called for a halt to this destruction, and outlined what we need to do to reverse it. 

In a statement released on the sidelines of the 16th Session of the UN Forum on Forests, the CPF warned that the COVID-19 pandemic could actually make things worse by putting extra pressure on forest resources and perhaps worsening deforestation. Healthy forests are essential to building back better and will also help reduce the risk of future zoonotic diseases.



Forests and woodlands are also important stores of carbon dioxide and soak up 30 per cent of emissions from industry and fossil fuels. This is why UNEP supports the Green Gigaton Challenge, an ambitious public-private partnership to catalyse funds to fight deforestation, with the target of reducing 1 gigaton (or 1 billion metric tonnes) of emissions by 2025.

Read the full CPF statement here

Find out more about how forests help human societies here

Read more about the Green Gigaton Challenge here

When Sneha Shahi led a campaign to clean up the filthy river that winds through the campus of Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in Gujarat, India, she got something of a shock -- the return of crocodiles to the stream.

The clean-up was started as part of UNEP’s Tide Turners Plastic Challenge campaign. Funded by the United Kingdom since 2018, the Challenge has reached over 225,000 youth in 25 countries in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.

Shahi organised a clean-up of the campus river and around 300 kgs of waste were removed, segregated and recycled. Bulk plastics and thermocol were cleaned and moulded into small planters and wall hangings. Glass bottles were sent for recycling. The project was extended and overall the group removed an enormous 700 kgs of waste from an 800-metre long stretch.

That’s when the wildlife began to return. Shahi and her team were delighted to see the return of Gangetic Flapshell turtles and crocodiles that swam up the tributary from the main river during the monsoon rains. Plant life and insects have also returned.

Read more about Shahi’s project here. 

Check out the Tide Turners Plastic Challenge here. 

Feeling inspired? Join #GenerationRestoration here and show your support for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.