Recent government commitments to restore degraded landscapes, such as those under the Bonn Challenge and relevant regional initiatives, total close to 1 billion hectares of land and span 115 countries. This ambition has been further buoyed by the announcement of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, 2021-2030. This decade will see unprecedented efforts to scale up restoration interventions to combat the climate and biodiversity crises and at the same time enhance food and water security. FAO is one of the leading implementing organizations of the Decade, together with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

To enhance restoration outcomes and assist stakeholders to meet ambitious restoration commitments, FAO and partners will provide support to countries and stakeholders to plan, monitor, and track restoration efforts, extent, and impact. Building on its existing forest and land monitoring platforms and experience, FAO will develop new technical solutions for restoration planning and monitoring.

FAO and partners are developing an operational monitoring and reporting framework for the Decade. As outlined in the Decade’s Strategy, the Framework for Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring (FERM) builds on, and complements, existing international, regional and national reporting processes, their goals, targets, criteria and indicators by providing to people, communities and countries, under one common umbrella, access to methodological guidance and tools to monitor ecosystem restoration, using priority and existing ecosystem restoration-related indicators.

In the run-up to the official launch of the UN Decade, set for June 5th on World Environment Day with the theme of ecosystem restoration, FAO and the Task Force on Monitoring are focused on:

• Development of the Framework for Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring (FERM) and accompanying geospatial dissemination platform.
• Development of innovative tools and geospatial modules for monitoring and planning restoration activities for different ecosystems, for use by and in consultation with restoration stakeholders.
• Organization of technical meetings for the Task Force on monitoring as a global network of ecosystem monitoring experts to help inform and develop the FERM and identify gaps and needs in support of the UN Decade.

 Collaboration

Critical to the success of the Decade is collaboration. Through the Task Force on Monitoring the team has developing an extensive collaboration with over 200 experts, helping to ensure synergies in global ecosystem restoration efforts. The Task Force includes over 90 organizations including:

• UN organizations
• International organizations
• Research and academia
• Governmental organizations

 More information on the Task Force on Monitoring can be found here.