It’s one of the most ambitious restoration projects on the planet: started in 2007, the 8,000 km-long Great Green Wall will span 11 African countries, from Senegal to Djibouti, unfurling a green band of restored land across the continent to fight land degradation and drought, boost food security, improve health and create thousands of new jobs.

This African-led initiative is already bringing life back to degraded landscapes at an unprecedented scale and when it’s complete, it will be the largest living structure on the planet, three times the size of the Great Barrier Reef.

Support for the project is growing. At the One Planet Summit for Biodiversity in January, the project received $14 billion in additional funding pledges for the next 10 years. The financiers include France, the African Development Bank and the World Bank.

The Great Green Wall is badly needed: In the Sahel, a dry stretch of land at the southern edge of the Sahara desert, climate change is happening one and a half times faster than the global average and the region now experiences droughts every two years, instead of the typical 10-year cycle.

The Great Green Wall is the first flagship of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and it epitomizes what can be achieved by working together.

Read more about the Great Green Wall here.

Check out this speech about the Wall by UNEP’s Executive Director Inger Andersen here.

There are few starker images of the destruction wreaked by climate change on the natural world than the bleached white skeletons of corals.

Restoring these vital ecosystems must be a priority during the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which coincides with the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and its mission to deliver the science we need for the future we want.

Coral reefs cover less than 0.1 per cent of the world’s oceans but they support over 25 per cent of marine biodiversity and serve at least a billion people with a wide range of ecosystem services, such as coastal protection, fisheries production, sources of medicine, recreational benefits, and tourism revenues.

But they are threatened by warming seas and we’ve already lost 50 per cent of our coral reefs. We can’t afford to lose any more.

A report from UNEP and the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) found that well-planned, well-funded and long-term coral reef restoration can be a useful tool to support coral reef resilience. The report aims to help those involved decide whether and how to use coral reef restoration as a strategy.

Read more about the report and about the importance of coral reefs here. 

Join UNEP’s Glowing, Glowing, Gone campaign to save the world’s coral reefs.

Read about a grant programme to support the conservation of coral reefs, mangroves and sea grasses here.

As well as preventing further damage to the natural world, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration seeks, as the name suggests, to mitigate some of the damage already done by humans to natural habitats and the species that live in them.

In Argentina, jaguars have been returned for the first time to the Iberá wetlands, 70 years after South America’s largest predator was driven to local extinction through hunting and habitat loss. 

This is the first reintroduction of jaguars in a place where they have gone extinct and it’s part of an effort known as “rewilding” – restoring the missing species, biodiversity, and natural processes to areas affected by human activity.

Jaguars are known as a top predator, meaning their role in an ecosystem is to regulate the population of their prey and, in turn, their prey’s prey. Without the jaguar to control the population of those herbivores below them on the food chain, the herbivores would consume too many plants and upset the balance of the ecosystem around them.

“Carefully re-introducing predators such as jaguars can help restore ecosystems. Without these species, biodiversity suffers and the services that nature provides can break down – from disease mitigation and soil protection to water system regulation,” says Doreen Robinson, Chief of Wildlife at UNEP.

Read more about the jaguars in Iberá here. 

Learn more about the critical importance of rewilding with the Global Rewilding Alliance.

And check out the Wild for Life campaign and their work on jaguars.

The COVID-19 crisis is a symptom of the environmental degradation caused by our unsustainable use of the planet’s resources. But it also offers a chance to set the world on a cleaner, greener and  more sustainable path to ensure that people and planet can thrive together.

At the virtual Fifth Session of the UN Environment Assembly in February, Member States expressed support for a green post-pandemic recovery that leaves no one behind but also protects and renews the fragile natural world.

Some countries are showing the way, using ecosystem restoration as an engine of employment, especially in rural areas where jobs are badly needed. It’s a win-win-win strategy, creating economic growth but also fighting climate change and biodiversity loss.

As UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen says: “A green recovery is one that tackles the climate, biodiversity and pollution crises at the same time. Some countries are already designing stimulus packages that include actions for forests, wetlands, soils and green cities. At the UN Biodiversity Summit, we saw a remarkable groundswell of political commitment to nature. But now we must step up on a massive-scale, actions to restore our degraded ecosystems.”



Read more here about 10 states that have included restoration commitments in their pandemic recovery plans.

Did you know that the planet is losing 4.7 million hectares of forests -- an area larger than Denmark -- every year? Or that over the past 50 years, half of the planets’ wetlands have been drained?

The cost of this destruction and negligence is staggering: the degradation of land and marine ecosystems undermines the well-being of 3.2 billion people and costs about 10 per cent of the annual global gross product in loss of species and services. 

That’s why the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is so key. We have to reverse these life-threatening trends now. 

Ahead of the launch of the Decade on World Environment Day on June 5, the team behind the Decade decided to find out what people thought about ecosystem restoration by polling visitors to the initiative’s website. Because in order to inspire people, you have to first know what they think, and why.

Check out the findings here. You might be surprised!

In February, UNEP released its “Making Peace with Nature” report, a scientific blueprint to tackle the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies. The report makes the strongest scientific case yet for why and how we must all work together to protect and restore the planet. 

Join a panel of experts, including UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen and the report’s lead author Sir Robert Watson -- as they discuss the findings and look how we can act now to halt our destruction of the environment. 

When: Tuesday, 27 April 2021, 3 - 4:30 p.m. EAT

Where: Online, register here.

Find out more about the live event here

Watch live here

Download the “Making Peace with Nature” report here

One of the biggest problems facing those seeking to restore and protect degraded or depleted ecosystems is financing. The world has not yet fully understood the value of nature in tackling our climate emergency and innovative projects harnessing nature’s power often struggle to attract financial support. 

According to UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report, public and private finance for adaptation must be stepped up urgently, along with faster implementation. 

This is exactly what the new Global EbA Fund, which is led by UNEP and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), aims to do. It will provide grants for innovative approaches to ecosystem-based adaptation, or EbA. These could include restoring urban forests to cool air and reduce heatwaves in cities or planting mangroves on coastlines to provide a natural defence against sea surges. 

If we are to achieve the mission of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and trigger a global movement for restoring the world’s ecosystems, these are the kinds of projects we need to support. 



Read more about the fund and the importance of financing for nature here

If you want to be part of #GenerationRestoration but are not quite sure how to go about it, we’ve got what you need to get started.

Ahead of World Environment Day on June 5, the UN Environment Programme and its partners have produced a practical guide to restoring ecosystems to help you make a difference and join in fully in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a global drive to halt the degradation of land and oceans, protect biodiversity, and rebuild ecosystems. The Decade will be officially launched on June 5.

The guide provides tips for individuals, communities, businesses and government agencies, showing how we can all revive the natural spaces around us. It shows how to design your own restoration project, green your home, business or school, change any unsustainable habits and stage online campaigns to draw attention to climate change and nature loss.

You will also learn all about the main ecosystem types from forests and farmlands to rivers and coasts.

Download the guide here and make World Environment Day the start of something big: the day you kick unsustainable products out of your life, or the moment you and others begin speaking up for the environment as part of #GenerationRestoration.

To mark Earth Day, the Faith for Earth initiative, the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology and the Parliament of World’s Religions released an inspirational video on their Faith for Earth Book.

The book describes the reverence that all religions have for creation and nature and aims to inspire readers to learn more about our planet, to share their commitment to it and to become part of the flourishing global interfaith movement that is increasingly bringing people together to protect and sustain life on Earth.

The book is a call to action for countries, cities, the private sector, individuals, and faith-based organizations to strengthen their actions to mitigate climate change, restore ecosystems, and protect the health of the planet without delay. This aligns directly with the aims of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which will be officially launched on World Environment Day on June 5.

This new edition of the book -- produced through a partnership between UNEP and the Parliament of the World’s Religions Climate Action Program — offers an introduction to the magnitude of the task we now face and to the faith communities that are becoming a force for the global environmental future.

Read more about the initiative here

Watch the video here

Download the book here

Read more about the role of faith leaders and faith-based organizations in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration here

Over the last month, the Flipflopi, a boat cobbled together from recycled plastic and flip flops, has been circumnavigating Africa’s biggest lake, braving high winds and torrential rain to shine a light on how plastic waste is threatening this valuable ecosystem.

The journey, sponsored in part by UNEP, ended this month in Mwanza, Tanzania, the last stop on a three-country, 850-kilometre voyage.

Many communities around Lake Victoria, whose shores are home to 40 million people, have long struggled with how to dispose of plastic bags, bottles and utensils, and now with disposable masks and gloves. The true extent of plastic pollution remains unknown, but one study found that 20 per cent of fish in Lake Victoria had plastic in their system.

This is an example of the damage our unsustainable consumption and production is doing to the ecosystems that sustain us. During the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the world must work together to restore these damaged areas so that people and planet can thrive together.

Read more about how the Flipflopi’s team are trying to change mindsets here.

Check out this amazing video of their voyage around Lake Victoria here