To support the implementation of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (UN Decade) and help achieve its goals, there is a need for a shared vision of ecosystem restoration. A key step in creating a shared vision of ecosystem restoration is to adopt principles that underpin the full set of ecosystem restoration activities under the UN Decade.

To this end, in 2021, the Task Force on Best Practices, the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Commission on Ecosystem Management (IUCN CEM) partnered to lead an inclusive effort to draft ten guiding principles for achieving the highest level of recovery possible through restoration projects, in collaboration with the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), EcoHealth Network, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

Standards of practice to guide ecosystem restoration: A contribution to the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021–2030

After the release of the principles and following the same participatory approach, the partnership continued to coordinate the development of Standards of practice to guide ecosystem restoration.  The Standards of practice offer more than 300 recommendations on how to apply the ten principles across the entire restoration process, and across the broad array of ecosystems and restoration activities under the UN Decade. The Standards of practice were co-produced with support of 33 authors from 25 organizations, as well as inputs and feedback from over 400 restoration experts from all continents. These recommendations, if adopted by restoration implementers, can improve the benefits of restoration activities for nature and people. Now that the Standards of practice are published, the Taskforce on Best Practices is focused on developing a suite of tools to promote their wide use and adoption.