Douglas McGuire, Coordinator of the Forest and Landscape Restoration Mechanism

The international community has set ambitious targets for forest and landscape restoration (FLR):

• In September 2011, ministers and other leaders launched the Bonn Challenge, setting a target of restoring at least 150 million hectares of degraded land by 2020;
• The CBD Aichi Target 15 also aims to restore at least 15 per cent of degraded ecosystems in each country by 2020;
• More recently the New York Declaration on Forests, adopted on the occasion of the Climate Summit held by the United Nations in September 2014, aims to restore 350 million hectares by 2030;
• The most ambitious, Target 15.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals, looks to achieve land degradation neutrality by 2030.

FLR raises many expectations due to its potential to bring positive solutions to socio-economic and environmental challenges. It aims to seek an optimal balance between restoring ecosystem services and productive functions of land for agriculture, forestry and other related uses that provide food, fiber, energy and other products and services for human well-being. It offers significant contributions to mitigate climate change and adapt to its adverse effects, increase food security, preserve soils, and create decent jobs, and overall it can be considered as an integral part of an inclusive green economy.

In the context of the Bonn Challenge, several regional initiatives have been launched recently at regional or sub-regional level:

1. The Initiative 20x20 was launched as a country-led effort to bring 20 million hectares of land in Latin America and the Caribbean into restoration by 2020.
2. The African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR 100) was launched at the Global Landscapes Forum during the UNFCC COP21 in Paris and aims to bring 100 million hectares of degraded forest landscapes into the process of restoration by 2030.
3. Governments began discussing an FLR regional strategy and action plan for Asia-Pacific at the Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission and Forestry Week in February in the Philippines with additional discussions scheduled during the Committee on Forestry (COFO) and World Forestry Week in July 2016 in Rome.
4. Mediterranean countries also expressed a strong interest in restoration in their Strategic Framework on Mediterranean Forests adopted in 2013, and the Fifth Mediterranean Forest Week (Morocco, March 2017) will be focused on FLR.

These regional initiatives aim to facilitate the implementation of national commitments by improving: (i) knowledge sharing on good practices on FLR; (ii) mobilization of financial resources (both from the public and private sectors), (iii) capacity development of key stakeholders involved in FLR initiatives, and (iv) the use of harmonized tools/methodologies to assess and monitor FLR efforts.

FAO support to FLR is mainly through the Forest and Landscape Restoration Mechanism (FLRM), which, in collaboration with relevant technical units throughout FAO, works at global, regional and country levels.

At country level, the FLRM is currently implementing national work plans for the period 2015-2018 in Cambodia, Guatemala, Lebanon, Peru, Philippines, Rwanda and Uganda. 
The national work plans prepared in 2015/2016 by the FLRM are mainly focused on the following three outputs:

1. Improving governance, institutional support and enabling environment of FLR with actions focused on intersectoral coordination, compared legislative analysis, knowledge dissemination and identification/mapping of restoration options;
2. Facilitating the access of national institutions to sustainable financing for FLR (public, private and/or climate financing instruments such as the Green Climate Fund);
3. Developing pilot actions focused on the implementation of innovative models, potentially replicable in other regions within each selected country, and implemented in synergy with other existing FAO projects or in partnership with other Global Partnership for Forest and Landscape Restoration (GPFLR) members.

At global/regional levels, the FLRM supported the following activities:

1. Capacity development workshops for government officials, jointly organized with the CBD Secretariat, on FLR and ecosystem restoration in West Africa (Ghana), Latin America (Colombia) and Asia-Pacific (Thailand);
2. Organization of an expert workshop on private sector Investments in FLR (Rome, July 2015) and publication of a working paper and policy brief, Sustainable financing for forest and landscape restoration;
3. Organization of the ''Drylands & Forest and Landscape Restoration Monitoring Week'' (Rome, April 2016) – an expert meeting to consolidate a roadmap to support countries’ efforts for monitoring and reporting on FLR.

This new electronic newsletter, The Forest and Landscape Restoration Mechanism, will be published every four months to present the main achievements of our team and to inform interested partners on ongoing actions implemented at global, regional and national levels.
As the Coordinator of the Forest and Landscape Restoration Mechanism team, I am particularly pleased to sign the editorial of this first issue of our newsletter, which covers our support at country level in Guatemala, Lebanon and Rwanda, global/regional dynamics in the Asia-Pacific region, and sustainable financing for forest and landscape restoration.