After the official launch of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (UN Decade) on 5 June 2021, where multiple partners showcased their ongoing efforts to help achieve ambitious global restoration goals, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the French Government held the IUCN World Conservation Congress from 3 to 11 September 2021 in Marseilles.

At this Congress, the FAO-led Task Force on Best Practices, a coalition of 63 global leading organizations established to actively contribute to the implementation of the UN Decade, jointly organized a hybrid side event with the IUCN-led UN Decade Science Task Force. As the Task Force on Best Practices focuses its efforts on knowledge dissemination and capacity development for restoration, the side event provided an opportunity to launch the publication Principles for ecosystem restoration to guide the United Nations Decade 2021–2030.

The ten principles presented in the publication were developed in partnership with IUCN’s Commission on Ecosystem Management (IUCN CEM) and the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) in collaboration with other global organizations)[1]. They are the result of a multi-stage and highly participatory consultation process, where experts and practitioners attempted to answer the question “What is good ecosystem restoration?” The principles also aim to provide guidance on all types of restoration activities across all sectors, biomes and regions.

To ensure the wide adoption of the principles, UNEP prepared a webstory, SER published a press release, the Global Landscapes Forum drafted an article after covering the launch, and the set of principles was integrated into the e-learning course on ecosystem restoration[2]. Furthermore, the principles will be translated into all UN languages and the Task Force on Best Practices will use them as criteria to assess good restoration practices.

To provide a comprehensive update to all members, and to present the way forward in 2022, the Task Force on Best Practices held its sixth (online) meeting on 12 October 2021. Besides the release of the principles, other achievements discussed were: i) the preparation of the framework for disseminating good restoration practices, including the launch and pilot testing of the practice collection template, and the identification of existing platforms for collecting and capitalizing on good practices; and ii) the ongoing preparation of the summary report on the key findings from the global capacity needs assessment (online global survey) undertaken early this year.

The way forward in 2022

As confirmed during the meeting, the Task Force on Best Practices will focus on the following key activities in 2022:

• Development of standards of practice for ecosystem restoration: following the partnership established with SER and IUCN CEM, these standards will provide practical guidance for implementing the ten principles for ecosystem restoration.

• Development of a knowledge and learning action plan: based on the gaps discovered during the capacity needs assessment, this action plan will identify existing knowledge products and capacity development initiatives that can be scaled up, and those that need to be developed.

• Continuing the development of the framework for disseminating good practices: this framework will address the refinement of the current template for the collection of (new) good practices as well as the process for reviewing these, disseminating endorsed practices and capitalizing on the practices collected by other platforms.

For more information contact us at: [email protected].

Christophe Besacier (FAO), Vera Boerger (FAO) and Andrea Romero (FAO)