- The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration has triggered a global movement to rally individual action, financial investment, and political backing to prevent, halt and reverse the loss of nature.
- Evidence-based standards can help meet restoration targets and improve general compliance with laws and regulations while delivering social, environmental and economic net gain for people and nature.
- “As we near the halfway point of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration [the] global application of effective restoration through the use of standards provides a path forward that can help slow climate change and recover ecosystem processes and biodiversity for the future of life on Earth,” a new op-ed argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.
Recognition of the need to restore degraded landscapes is accelerating at pace. The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (the UN Decade) has triggered a global movement to rally individual action, financial investment, and political backing to prevent, halt and reverse the loss of nature. In October, at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP16) conference in Cali, Colombia, experts and policymakers focused on mobilizing global action to implement all 23 targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF). Target 2 (the restoration target) encourages all parties to bring 30% of degraded ecosystems under effective restoration by 2030. In December restoration also received significant attention at the UN Convention to Combat Desertification COP. In addition, incoming regulations like the EU Nature Restoration Law (NRL) are creating mandatory obligations to restore previously degraded lands. These initiatives are driving countries, industry, and civil society to elevate investment in, implementation of, and reporting about ecosystem restoration.
Corporations and investors increasingly understand community expectations to invest in the protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystem services – because their businesses depend on or impact these resources upon which all life depends. But ecosystem restoration is inherently uncertain – ecosystems do not always react as we expect them to, and therefore restoration projects do not always achieve their intended outcomes. This uncertainty can be due to variability in, for example, landscape ecology and climate, understanding of effective design and implementation, funding and policy frameworks, and the level of community engagement. An increasing number of globally relevant tools and guidelines are helping ensure that restoration projects deliver positive, measurable long-term outcomes while simultaneously reducing the risk and uncertainty associated with this work.
Over the past decade, specialist researchers, scientists, academics, and practitioners on our Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) team have developed evidence-based International Principles and Standards for Ecological Restoration (the “SER Standards”). Based on eight principles (Figure 1) the standards offer a roadmap to design, implement, and track the progress and outcomes of ecological restoration projects. They also underpin the UN Decade’s Standards of Practice to Guide Ecosystem Restoration and the Ten Guiding Principles for the UN Decade, which apply more broadly to a suite of activities across the entire restorative continuum. The UN Decade tools were developed jointly by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), SER and International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) along with dozens of additional authors and organizations. Together, these resources provide a robust suite of globally recognized guidance to support countries, industry, and communities as they implement effective restoration. They also support and encourage continued innovation from restoration practitioners.
At COP16, the CBD released new guidance for countries to support the implementation of Target 2. The guide specifically defines effective restoration as:
“Standards-based restoration underpinned by agreed principles that results in appropriately balanced sustainable net gain that benefits and enhances biodiversity, ecosystem integrity and human well-being.”
This definition elevates the importance of standards as a foundation to support all aspects of restoration and clarifies that effective restoration needs to benefit both people and nature. A growing body of case studies also demonstrates how standards facilitate restoration and improve outcomes not just for nature, but for all stakeholders, including Indigenous and local communities. For entities that apply the standards, particularly in sectors such as mining, this can increase social license to operate and expand marketability in light of growing scrutiny on their operations.
Below, we demonstrate how standards-based restoration is being applied in several contexts, from global to national and sectoral. We explore how evidence-based standards can help meet Target 2 of the KM-GBF, support high-quality delivery of the EU NRL, and improve general compliance with laws and regulations while delivering social, environmental and economic net gain for people and nature.
International frameworks to support policy development and accelerate restoration
One goal of SER’s Standards is to increase alignment and integration with other global frameworks, in particular those that enable the assessment of projects implemented to meet global targets, including global tree planting targets. The Resource Guide to Target 2 (T2 Guide) helps translate restoration commitments into action – to help set targets, implement plans and measure outcomes. The T2 Guide does not mandate the use of specific restoration standards, it supports countries to use relevant standards to set appropriate restoration targets and track results against those targets with concepts like the restorative continuum (Figure 2). It also includes comprehensive resources, from a “restoration terminology helper” to specific planning, implementation, and monitoring guidance. And it offers case studies from different countries and biomes that illustrate the challenges and successes of a diversity of projects.
In addition to the launch of the T2 Guide, the Global Biodiversity Standard (TGBS) launched its new manual and announced its first three certified projects at CBD COP16. TGBS is a scientifically rigorous global biodiversity certification for tree planting and other conservation/restoration projects. It is designed to ensure that restorative activities – from tree planting to agroforestry – protect and enhance biodiversity. Unlike many other current project certifications, TGBS assesses the outcomes of projects, not just the process for those projects. To be certified under TGBS, projects are reviewed on the ground by locally trained assessors. It provides clear, consistent and replicable steps for assessing, verifying and certifying biodiversity outcomes for funders, policymakers and practitioners. It is an important and significant step towards integrating biodiversity, climate, and restoration objectives.
Implementing global standards at the national scale
SER’s Standards are global but have been designed to be flexible and easily applied at the local or national level to restoration at any scale and in different landscapes. For example, SER and SER-Europe partnered with WWF Spain to develop specific standards for the restoration of Mediterranean forests in Spain. These standards are aligned to the SER Standards but are designed for a specific type of forest and tiered to the Spanish legal/cultural context.
Developed with input from Spanish restoration experts, this guidance is a valuable tool that can help support the development of Spain’s National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan for the KM-GBF and that has the potential to provide a strong foundation for Spain’s development of its national restoration plan under the NRL. Discussions are underway about how they can be adapted for use in other Mediterranean forest ecosystems outside of Spain.
Standards-based restoration benefits local communities
Since 2022, SER has collaborated with Microsoft to implement standards-based restoration projects that benefit designated communities in which Microsoft operates. To date, the collaboration has initiated 20 projects in 10 countries on five continents. These diverse projects include the restoration of a wetland in Norway to revive the white stork population; enhancing biodiversity alongside environmental education in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest; community engagement and planting of native species to restore mangroves in Malaysia; and restoration of a community forest in the U.S. state of Iowa.
These projects and more serve as powerful examples of the value of applying standards to support community-centered restoration. The evidence-based framework enables all partners to identify and manage risk during implementation, and to select projects that will have a measurable, positive impact within local communities.
Sectoral application of standards: Mine site restoration
The global mining footprint is estimated to be over 120,000 km2 and is anticipated to increase by over 60% from 2020 levels by 2060. Mining occurs in 145 countries, with many mines sited in biodiversity hotspots. In addition, abandoned mines are a major challenge, with more than one million abandoned sites around the world. The mining sector offers an instructive case study on the challenges and the potential of ecological restoration to enable the recovery of ecosystems that have been severely degraded by mining.
Most current guidance and regulatory requirements related to mining obligate the industry only to achieve ‘safe, stable, and non-polluting’ reclamation during and after mining. Ecological restoration is most often an afterthought, if it occurs at all.
Recognizing the extraordinary impact of mining, and the need not only for reclamation but for ecological restoration, SER developed International Principles and Standards for the Ecological Restoration and Recovery of Mine Sites (Mine Site Restoration Standards or “MSRS”), which were released at CBD COP15 in Montreal in December 2022. The MSRS articulates how effective restoration can be implemented in conjunction with mining, both on the actual mining footprint and immediately adjacent lands, and as appropriate in degraded lands in the surrounding landscape. The MSRS provides mining-specific guidance as well as real-world case studies.
Standards-based evaluation for mine restoration in a global biodiversity hotspot
A new paper by Campbell et al published in October 2024 applies the MSRS to an Australian mine site. The paper reviews short- (18 month), medium- (16 year) and long-term (29 year) outcomes for restoration at the Alcoa mine in the Northern Jarrah Forest region in southwest Australia. Active for 60 years, it is the world’s third-largest mine in terms of spatial impact and it is situated in a biodiversity hotspot. The mine’s social license to operate relies on community confidence that the native ecosystem is being restored, given its substantial value to the community, including to local Indigenous people.
SER’s Ecological Recovery Wheel enabled the researchers to measure and illustrate the multiple factors that constitute effective ecological restoration (Figure 3). This was a highly complex process and the “first in-depth quantitative use of the standards for a major mine site” (Campbell et al, 2024, p3).
The study resulted in a rating of two stars out of a potential five, below Alcoa’s stated medium-term goal of four stars. However, the process of applying the standards enabled an accurate, quantitative analysis of restoration efforts taking into account the key factors that constitute successful restoration.
“Given the complexities involved in the project (threatened biodiversity hotspot, complex biodiversity, large area of operations, and long timeframes),” the authors conclude, “the effective application of the standards’ generic framework and criteria is a strong endorsement of their design as a tool for informing restoration outcome quality.”
Conclusion
The above examples offer insight into how standards-based restoration provides a framework to assess different types of restoration projects across a variety of contexts, scales, biomes and degrees of degradation, with valuable insights as to how standards can support corporations, governments, practitioners and local communities to reduce risk and uncertainty associated with ecosystem and ecological restoration.
For industry, the standards offer quantifiable metrics and replicable processes that help support evidence-based decision-making to accurately assess risk, plan projects, and quantify outcomes. For governments, they offer a framework on which to build regulations for the highest impact restoration. And through engagement and participation of local and Indigenous communities, standards-based restoration can help ensure resilient and biodiverse ecosystems, and healthy landscapes for people and nature.
As we near the halfway point of both the UN Decade and the KM-GBF, the global application of effective restoration through the use of standards provides a path forward that can help slow climate change and recover ecosystem processes and biodiversity for the future of life on Earth.
Karma Bouazza is Chair of the Board of the Society for Ecological Restoration, and Bethanie Walder is its Executive Director.
Banner image: Catherine Toro, President of Asociación Agroambiental Perú Contigo, holds tree seedlings destined for her community’s restoration project in Ayapel, Córdoba. Image by Begi Rojas Duarte for Mongabay.
Related audio from Mongabay’s podcast: How ecological restoration brings humanity and biodiversity together, listen here:
References:
Campbell, T., Dixon, K.W., Bradshaw, S.D., Gann, G.D., Hartley, W., Lambers, H. & Wardell-Johnson, G. (2024). Standards-based evaluation inform ecological restoration outcomes for a major mining activity in a global biodiversity hotspot. Restoration Ecology . doi: 10.1111/rec.14236
FAO, IUCN CEM and SER. (2021). Principles for ecosystem restoration to guide the United Nations Decade 2021–2030. Rome, FAO.
FAO, SCBD & SER. (2024). Delivering restoration outcomes for biodiversity and human well-being – Resource guide to Target 2 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Rome, Montreal, Canada and Washington, DC.
Gann, G.D., McDonald, T., Walder, B., Aronson, J., Nelson, C.R., Jonson, J., Hallett, J.G., Eisenberg, C., Guariguata, M.R., Liu, J., Hua, F., Echeverria, C., Gonzales, E.K., Shaw. N., Decleer, K., Dixon, K.W. (2019). International principles and standards for the practice of ecological restoration. Second edition. Restoration Ecology S1-S46. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.13035
Nelson, C.R., Hallett, J.G., Romero Montoya, A.E., Andrade, A., Besacier, C., Boerger, V., Bouazza, K., Chazdon, R., Cohen-Shacham, E., Danano, D., Diederichsen, A., Fernandez, Y., Gann, G.D., Gonzales, E.K., Gruca, M., Guariguata, M.R., Gutierrez, V., Hancock, B., Innecken, P., Katz, S.M., McCormick, R., Moraes, L.F.D., Murcia, C., Nagabhatla, N., Pouaty Nzembialela, D., Rosado-May, F.J., Shaw, K., Swiderska, K., Vasseur, L., Venkataraman, R., Walder, B., Wang, Z., & Weidlich, E.W.A. (2024). Standards of practice to guide ecosystem restoration – A contribution to the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030. Rome, FAO, Washington, DC, SER & Gland, Switzerland, IUCN CEM. https://doi.org/10.4060/cc9106en
Standards Reference Group SERA (2021) National Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration in Australia. Edition 2.2. Society for Ecological Restoration Australasia. Available from URL: Available from URL: http://www.seraustralasia.com/standards/home.html
Tiemann, C., MacDonald, V., Young, R. and Dixon, K. (2022), Rehabilitation and mine closure policies creating a pathway to relinquishment: an Australian perspective. Restor Ecol, 30: e13785. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.13785
Young, R.E., Gann, G.D., Walder, B., Liu, J., Cui, W., Newton, V., Nelson, C.R., Tashe, N., Jasper, D., Silveira, F.A., Carrick, P.J., Hägglund, T., Carlsén, S. and Dixon, K. (2022), International principles and standards for the ecological restoration and recovery of mine sites. Restor Ecol, 30: e13771. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.13771
See related coverage:
How are mangrove restoration projects doing?: Interview with Tom Worthington
Why I quit the film industry to work on ecological restoration (commentary)
Credits
