Transnational Restoration Projects Serve as Blueprint for Global Action

Transnational Restoration Projects Serve as Blueprint for Global Action Needed to Restore 1 Billion Hectares by 2030

Leaders emphasize the need for community and collaboration at the heart of large-scale projects

Washington DC - Wednesday, June 23, 2021 - The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration has identified the need to restore at least 1 billion hectares of degraded lands by 2030, with marine and aquatic restoration equally important. Landscapes are not restricted by national borders and speakers today at the 9th World Conference on Ecological Restoration, SER2021, emphasized the need for effective transnational collaboration along with deep community engagement in order for the UN’s goals to be achieved. 

One of the most ambitious large-scale restoration projects of this generation is Africa’s Great Green Wall. It is planned for completion in 2030 and will be the largest human-made living “structure” on earth. The project was launched in 2007 by the African Union to tackle the effects of natural resource depletion in the drylands around the Sahara and particularly the Sahel, an area that’s home to approximately 256 million people.

“The pan-African agency was set up to help monitor and coordinate the progress of the implementation of the Great Green Wall,” explained Moctar Sacande of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an advisor to the project, during a presentation today: “The agency came up with a harmonized regional strategy, within which different countries set up their national action plans.”

However, most important of all, explained Sacande, is consulting with local communities, whose engagement and input is fundamental to the project’s success. “Our model for approaching large-scale restoration considered the community first and foremost,” he said. “They must be at the heart of restoration governance...we consulted closely with community groups on their preferences for plant species and objectives of the restoration. From these questionnaires, we collected over 200 species in 13 countries that local people consider essential for medicine, food, fuel and other important uses.” 

The topic for the second plenary on Day 3 of SER2021 will be the restoration of the Colorado River Delta. It is another transnational partnership that is helping to protect the water supply to seven states in the US and Mexico impacting almost 40 million people, including all of the major cities in the US Southwest. 

The river has been overused. It no longer flows to the sea and reservoirs in the US today hold less than 40% of their full capacity for water storage. Projections show a further decrease in supply, as water evaporates in a warming climate, and increased demand as populations continue to grow in the region.

While water shortages are a threat in the southwestern US and northwestern Mexico, in Mexico the drying of the Delta also endangers the indigenous Cucapa, or river people, whose culture has evolved with the river and who rely on it for fish. The basin has a vast diversity of habitat types and is  home to around 380 species of birds.  Millions of migratory birds use the Delta each year; it is an essential part of the continental flyway and a priority wetland for bird conservation in North America.

Osvel Hinojosa-Huerta has worked on the restoration of the Colorado River Delta for almost 25 years, originally in Mexico and now with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. In a keynote plenary session that will run this evening, June 23, at 6:45pm ET, he will highlight the importance of collaboration for the project’s success. “A very important part of the process of restoring the Delta was what we called the Conservation Priorities,” he says. “This was developed by a coalition of environmental organizations ...as well as academics and agencies from both sides of the border. It was about bringing people together to define what restoration means, and building a common understanding and vision for the Delta.” 

The main outcome of these discussions was a consensus on what was possible. The group understood that the Delta could not be restored to what it had been 100 years earlier, but came to realize that there was a lot of potential based on the resilience. The coalition of NGOs from the US and Mexico became Raise the River.

“With growing interest in the potential for ecosystem restoration in the Colorado River Delta, NGOs who had been talking with each other across the border...realized that in order to advance that vision, we really had to have help not only from the fish and wildlife agencies but also from the water managers and the water users,” says Jennifer Pitt, Colorado River Program Director with the National Audubon Society. “There were a lot of meetings over many many years...bringing together such a diverse group of people really was a challenge. And yet, [these regular meetings] allowed people to form relationships and understand each other...Today we have a shared, equal commitment from the two countries to support the restoration of the Delta.”

Restoration projects in key areas of Delta aimed to recover the area’s native vegetation for the benefit of biodiversity and for people. Over 440 hectares of riparian forest have been restored, supporting native vegetation and bird communities. Along with the ecological goals, the project has achieved important social goals for the local communities on the Delta, providing them with water for recreation and enhancing their connection with nature.

Rivers, watersheds, mountain ranges, and the wildlife who depend on them, do not follow national borders. The transnational restoration projects featured at SER2021 illustrate the importance of cooperation across borders and the global ecological benefits such partnerships can create. These case studies confirm that we really can catalyze global change through the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. 

About the Society for Ecological Restoration

The Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) advances the science, practice and policy of ecological restoration to sustain biodiversity, improve resilience in a changing climate, and re-establish an ecologically healthy relationship between nature and culture. An international non-profit organization with over 4,000 members in more than 85 countries, we actively promote participatory, knowledge-based approaches to restoration. Learn more about our work at www.ser.org.

For more information please contact:

Media contact:

Florencia Panizza

Claro Communications Consulting

florencia@claro-comm.com

P: +1 437 992 1204

Society for Ecological Restoration:

Bethanie Walder

Society for Ecological Restoration

bethanie@ser.org

P: +406-543-5926