New initiative to restore forests in Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia
Degradation of land and ecosystems is one of the greatest challenges that face countries around the world. Human socio-economic activities and bio-physical factors, such as deforestation and soil erosion, exacerbated by climate change, are the main causes of degradation.
Aiming to reverse this trend, several international organizations are partnering with regional countries to bring 30 million hectares of degraded and deforested landscapes into restoration by 2030 in Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
The ECCA30 initiative, launched during the UN Climate Action Summit in New York, is supported by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), FAO, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the World Resources Institute, and the World Bank.
Restoring degraded land, including through reforestation, can make a major contribution to climate change mitigation. As recent scientific studies have demonstrated, large-scale forest regeneration has enormous potential to support climate action by absorbing carbon dioxide.
UNECE has already supported Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan in their commitment to restore around 3 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 under the Bonn Challenge. ECCA30’s ambitious goal will improve 10 times the number of affected hectares to 30 million, an area roughly equivalent to the size of Italy, through the benefits of forest landscape restoration.
Framework supports countries
ECCA30 partners will facilitate countries’ access to technical and financial support and reinforce regional cooperation and knowledge exchange on forest landscape restoration. Specifically, the UNECE/FAO Forestry and Timber Section will help countries under the initiative by providing a platform for policy dialogue and advice, and capacity building on forest landscape restauration, data improvement and assessment. The initiative aims to make a tangible regional contribution to the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) and drive progress across multiple Sustainable Development Goals.
The initiative aims to position Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia as a powerful player in the global movement for forest landscape restauration. Countries participating in ECCA30 will lead the local efforts, building on the growing political momentum in the region for land restoration as enshrined in the Astana Resolution.
Benefits are manifold
By incorporating forest landscape restoration as part of their forestry and other land use targets for their post-2020 Nationally Determined Contributions to the Paris Agreement, countries can seize this opportunity for transformative climate action.
“Regional cooperation is extremely important for forest landscape restoration,” emphasized UNECE Executive Secretary Olga Algayerova. “I commend the efforts of countries of the region to restore degraded and deforested landscapes and their commitment to combat climate change and sustain healthy, functioning ecosystems. Forest landscape restoration can also increase ecosystems’ and societies’ resilience to climate-related disaster risks such as drought, flooding and landslides.”
Studies have estimated that USD 53 billion of investment in restoration and sustainable land management in Central Asia over the next 30 years would avoid the cumulative costs of soil erosion, forest loss and other types of land degradation of up to USD 288 billion over the same period. In Eastern Europe, the required investments over this period are estimated at USD 777 billion, compared to the staggering costs of inaction of up to USD 4 813 billion.
Investments in Western Europe of USD 181 billion would be dwarfed by the costs of inaction of up to USD 926 billion. This puts the return on investment at a factor of 5 for Central Asia and Western Europe and 6 for Eastern Europe, making a strong economic justification for action.
23 September 2019, New York, United States