NEWS
Financing opportunities for
restoration
For centuries, the world’s forests have been cleared and removed for agricultural
or other land uses, often resulting in degraded lands found in almost every country
today. As global population increases and climate change threatens ecosystems
worldwide, there is an urgent need for more sustainable management of land to
help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
As a process of restoring degraded lands and retrieving
their economic and environmental productivity, forest
landscape restoration is a promising way to achieve
desalination of the soils and reduced wind and water erosion. It
also helps filtering drinking water and raising the level of
groundwater in restored areas and the storage of carbon dioxide
in the newly accumulated biomass.
So far, countries in Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia
pledged to restore close to 3 million hectares of degraded land
under the Bonn Challenge, a global effort to restore 350 million
hectares of degraded land by 2030, which also count under the
ECCA30, a regional initiative to restore 30 million hectares by
2030 in Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Countries interested in forest landscape restoration commonly
cite the lack of funding as a major impediment for its
implementation. This is a particularly acute issue in the light of
current COVID-19 outbreak, as funding priorities are expected to
shift towards the economic recovery and strengthening and
re-building of healthcare systems.
To address the commonly asked question: “What are sources of
financing forest landscape restoration?”, the UNECE/FAO Forestry
and Timber Section, in cooperation with the International Union for
the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), hosted a webinar where
representatives of donor countries and key international
institutions informed countries interested in forest landscape
restoration about existing sources of funding.
Speaking on behalf of the Federal German Ministry for the
Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Dr Michael
Krause-Besan, IKI Secretariat, introduced the International Climate
Initiative (IKI) project portfolio supporting forest landscape
restoration efforts in ODA eligible countries, available through
large-scale programmes and thematic/country calls.
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) also offers long term financing
opportunities under the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change, informed Mr Marc Dumas-Johansen. Another
potential source of funding presented at the webinar was the
Global Environment Facility (GEF), that already dedicated around
USD350-million in grants towards restoration purposes in its
current funding cycle (2018-2022).
Speaking on behalf of GEF, Mr Ulrich Apel underlined that an
active pledge under the Bonn Challenge represents an important
selection criterion for funding restoration and will be taken into
account during the next funding
cycle. Mr Stephen Hart from the
European Investment Bank
illustrated the financing
opportunities for biodiversity
and climate adaptation for
businesses and cities using
Nature-based Solutions, through
the bank’s Natural Capital
Financing Facility.
THE NATURE CONSERVANCY
As a process of restoring degraded lands and retrieving their economic and environmental
productivity, forest landscape restoration is a promising way to achieve desalination of the
soils and reduced wind and water erosion.
In their conclusions, speakers
underlined the diversity of
financing mechanisms and
sources of finance, and the
importance of linking
restoration efforts to national
objectives in order to access
finance from climate,
biodiversity, sustainable
development and the private
sector.
4 OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2020 // www.timberiq.co.za