Land degradation is currently impacting the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people (IPBES, 2018a). Furthermore, it adversely affects climate, food security and biodiversity (IPBES, 2018a; 2019; IPCC, 2019). Up to 50% of rangelands are degraded as evidenced by reduced soil fertility and nutrients, erosion, salinisation, alkalinisation, and soil compaction (UNCCD, 2024). The planet is also losing 10 million hectares of forests per year (FAO, 2020) and with it, the many global and local ecosystem services that forests provide, including climate change mitigation, habitat for biodiversity, water regulation and much more.
To address some of these challenges, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly passed resolution 73/284 in 2019 to declare 2021-2030 the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. The UN defines ‘ecosystem restoration’ as “the process of halting and reversing degradation, resulting in improved ecosystem services and recovered biodiversity. Ecosystem restoration encompasses a wide continuum of practices, depending on local conditions and societal choice” (UNEP, 2021, p. 7). Importantly, ecosystem restoration applies to all ecosystems and biomes 4 (e.g., marine, grasslands, wetlands, forests), although the majority of restoration initiatives to date can be found in forest ecosystems (Meli et al., 2023).
