The UN Decade on Ecological Restoration: Ten Guiding Principles

SER is pleased to announce the release of a set of 10 guiding principles for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. These principles are intended to guide the delivery of all aspects of the UN Decade, from international policy support to restoration implementation on the ground and in the water. SER was one of three lead partners in the creation of the guiding principles, as explained below.

In 2017, SER began co-hosting global fora to convene invited restoration experts to address pressing issues in ecological restoration. These biennial global fora are hosted as side events to the SER World Conferences. We have partnered with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), specifically their Commission on Ecosystem Management (CEM), and the CEM Ecosystem Restoration Thematic Group (ERTG) since the first global forum in Iguassu Falls, Brazil.

In 2021, due to COVID, the global forum was held virtually in the months leading up to the conference. The forum had three themes:

• Defining net gain across the restorative continuum
• Prioritizing restorative interventions
• Developing common principles and standards of practice across scales and disciplines

Early in the process, SER and IUCN-CEM also partnered with the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration Best Practices Task Force (BPTF) to coordinate and deliver one of the third themes, regarding principles and standards of practice. The newly announced UN Decade Principles are the result of that collaboration. The following timeline outlines the overall, co-creative process from January through September 2021.

You can also download the full document articulating the principles here. The shorthand titles and icons for the principles are:

SER members may be particularly interested to know why and how these principles differ from the SER International Principles and Standards for the Practice of Ecological Restoration. The SER Principles were one of many sets of related principles that were consulted and consolidated in the development of the UN Decade Principles. But it is also important to note that ecological restoration is a subset of the broader field of ecosystem restoration. The following definitions may be helpful:

• Ecological Restoration: The process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged or destroyed. (SER Primer 2004)
• Ecosystem Restoration: The process of halting and reversing degradation, resulting in improved ecosystem services and recovered biodiversity. Ecosystem restoration encompasses a wide continuum of practices, depending on local conditions and societal choice. (UN Decade Launch report, June 2021)
• Forest and Landscape Restoration: The process of regaining ecological functionality and enhancing human well-being across deforested or degraded forest landscapes. (Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration)
• Restorative activities: Those activities that may not necessarily be ecological restoration but which are based on the principles underpinning ecological restoration. (SER International Standards 2016)

In this context, the UN Decade has defined ecosystem restoration to broadly include activities along the entire restorative continuum, whereas ecological restoration really occurs only on the right hand half of the restorative continuum. SER purposefully named it the “restorative” not the “restoration” continuum, to distinguish between activities that are restorative but do not rise to the level of restoration. We would still argue that stopping degradation is restorative, but it is not actually ecological or ecosystem restoration, unless the removal of degradation alone leads to natural regeneration. At this point, it is important for us to update the bottom “bars” on the continuum to articulate where “ecosystem restoration” fits and whether it covers all six columns.

SER, IUCN-CEM, and the UN BPTF intend to continue to work together to develop Standards of Practice for the UN Decade in order to help the Decade achieve the highest level of success possible. SER is also still working with IUCN-CEM to finalize the products from the other two themes of the 2021 Global Forum and we hope to have those completed by year-end.

We encourage you to share these 10 principles with your colleagues and those who may be new to the field of restoration ecology.