Did you know that restoring 350 million hectares of degraded land between now and 2030 could generate USD 9 trillion in ecosystem services and take an additional 13-26 gigatons of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere?

A restoration economy would also create millions of green jobs and enhance humanity’s resilience to future shocks and stresses, say experts. If you revitalize farmlands, grasslands, forests, wetlands and peatlands, it rebuilds their ability to store carbon and can also protect habitat for biodiversity, build soil fertility, reduce water scarcity and help protect the world from zoonotic diseases, like COVID-19.

So it’s good news that countries have committed to restoring up to 1 billion hectares of land -- an area roughly the size of China -- according to a study released last year by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

The study found that 115 countries have made commitments to restore land under at least one of three major international environmental conventions – the Land Degradation Neutrality targets of the Sustainable Development Goals, Nationally Determined Contributions to the Paris Climate Agreement and National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans – along with the Bonn Challenge, an effort to restore degraded and deforested lands.

Read more about this global drive to restore land here.

Check out more stories on the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration here.