The Restoration Initiative (TRI) is a programme operating in ten African and Asian countries with the aim of restoring degraded landscapes in support of the Bonn Challenge, which brings together the knowledge and expertise of three Global Environment Facility agencies: the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

A Programme Advisory Committee (PAC) was established to support and guide the overall progress of TRI; its first meeting was held virtually on 1 and 2 October 2020.

On the first day the following main points were discussed:

• TRI offers a great opportunity to enhance understanding of restoration and it was recommended to strengthen the capture and generation of knowledge products based on the experiences from the different national projects on the ground.

• Reporting remains an important issue and needs strengthening to ensure all stakeholders involved in TRI have common understanding of agreed indicators at global project level. For the year 2 reporting, it will be proposed access to a geographic information system (GIS), which will facilitate the rigorous assessment of changes from baseline trends.

• PAC members highlighted the need to ensure that linkages and synergies should continuously be promoted between in-country aligned projects, and especially in the two TRI national projects in Kenya.

• The need to engage the private sector in TRI activities devoted to finance mobilization.

On the second day the following key topics were underlined amongst PAC members:

• The impact of COVID-19 on TRI: it emerged that while COVID-19 has hindered TRI work, it has also shown the importance of maintaining a crucial balance between humankind and nature. TRI also offers a unique opportunity to “build back better” and restoration efforts need to be integrated into recovery and green stimulus packages. This will require effective communication of TRI experiences to decision-makers. It was also suggested to include a feature section on this topic in the next TRI Year in Review.

• The upcoming United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030) provides a great opportunity for TRI to establish itself as a flagship forest and landscape restoration (FLR) programme. This would be a great way to report on the initiative’s successes and share its methodology, tools and experiences.

• The third TRI programme workshop and financial support from the UNEP Finance Initiative (FI) were discussed: UNEP FI presented the development of the platform Restoration Factory, which will be launched in November through a six-month training programme. PAC members noted the challenge of mobilizing/leveraging private capital for restoration and different opportunities to mobilize FLR finance among the various TRI countries were discussed. It was acknowledged that an effective way to mobilize funding for FLR was to put forward strong business cases for restoration actions.

• The strategic partnerships that could benefit TRI and the valuable lessons that could be learned from other initiatives were considered. It was pointed out that many other restoration projects, especially in Africa, have been launched or are ongoing and TRI should actively connect with these to share knowledge and tools and harmonize monitoring. PAC members also emphasized the importance of linking TRI and other restoration initiatives under International Conventions (UNFCCC, UNCCD and CBD).

The meeting provided an opportunity to identify clear recommendations on different areas of identified need and opportunity for TRI projects in order to strengthen delivery and enhance outcomes and impact; great emphasis was placed on the need for TRI to show how it is putting restoration into practice and demonstrate the success that the initiative is having.

Benjamin DeRidder and Christophe Besacier (FAO)