“Just as we caused the climate crises, the bio-diversity crises, and the pollution crises, we can reverse the damage that we have done; we can be the first generation to reimagine, to recreate and to restore nature to kickstart action for a better world.”
Inger Andersen, Executive Director, UNEP
The Bonn Challenge Declaration and the United Nations Declaration of 2021-30 as the “Decade of Ecosystem Restoration at the forefront of the world’s biodiversity and climate change agendas. The Bonn Challenge launched by the Government of Germany and the International Union for Conservation of Nature or IUCN in 2011 has set a significant target of restoring over 350 million hectares of endangered terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems by 2030.
Globally, according to UNEP, the 350-million-hectare restoration initiative is expected to create ecosystem services worth $9 trillion and reduce 13-26 gigatons of atmospheric GHG by 2030. The economic returns are estimated to be nine times the investment cost.
Ecological restoration aims to initiate and accelerate the recovery of the ecosystem after damage, degradation and destruction. It aims to restore self-organizing ecosystems on a path of full recovery. The restoration of the ecosystem intends to help restore destroyed or damaged ecosystems and preserve intact ecosystems. Restorers do not carry out the actual work of restoring the ecosystem. Restoring the ecosystem is an essential contribution to the application of the ecosystem approach. Healthy ecosystems are rich in biodiversity and offer great benefits such as fertile soils, higher yields of timber and fish, and more significant greenhouse gas reserves.
According to the standards and disciplines defined, the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) guidelines for developing and managing ecological renaturation projects describe procedures for implementing ecological renaturation. The SER brooch is a concise explanation of restoration principles, including the cited definitions of restoration, the way restoration plans are carried out and evaluated, the integration of the restoration with related disciplines.
The Society for Ecological Restoration defines ecological restoration as “the deliberate activity of initiating and accelerating the recovery of ecosystems concerning the ecosystem’s health, integrity, and sustainability”.
In the repair and restoration of ecosystems, restorers apply concepts from the field of ecology. Ecological restoration focuses on repairing the damage that human activities have done to natural ecosystems, attempting to restore them to an earlier state, or a state that is closely related to a state that remains unchanged through human activities. It differs from the nature conservation practice, which is to prevent further loss of ecosystems.
Ecological restoration is restoring habitat and ecosystem functions by restoring land and water on which plants and animals depend. Restoration is a corrective step that includes eliminating or changing the causes of ecological degradation and restoring natural processes (e.g. Natural fires, floods, predator-prey relationships) that sustain and renew ecosystems over time.
Intransigent defences against ecosystems, strict conservation and effective recovery strategies are essential to address the extinction crisis. Given that only a few ecosystems on Earth are unaffected by human activity, their restoration promises to contain the biodiversity crisis and ensure that ecosystem services are provided to humanity. However, few studies document the recovery of ecosystems or the speed at which they recover.
Ecosystems and their biodiversity support economic growth, sustainable development, and human well-being and restoration have become essential strategies to increase ecosystem services and reverse biodiversity loss. Due to anthropogenic and natural impacts, the pace of ecosystem destruction is rapid, and billions of dollars are spent annually to restore damaged ecosystems.
Ecological restoration is the human facilitation of the repair of damaged or destroyed ecosystems. Restoring environments can take years to work without human intervention and may never be the same as their intact predecessors, but restoration remains an integral part of the conservation toolbox.
Many restoration projects seek to establish ecosystems from native species, while other projects seek to restore, improve or create certain ecosystem functions such as pollination or erosion control. Whereas nature conservation biology, due to its importance and popularity, focuses on vertebrates (animals), restoration ecology focuses primarily on plants. Since the renaturation ecology focuses on plants, renaturation projects often begin with the formation of plant communities.
For example, the passive recovery of grassland from agriculture is not comparable to the active restoration of forests from agriculture. We could not determine that active recovery accelerates or achieves full recovery, even in some studies that compared recovery with passive recovery in a single place after the same disturbance. The new study recognizes that the restoration of the ecosystem must consider the needs of the people living in the remaining areas.
In reality, the restoration will not restore a complete collection of native species to the full extent of ecosystems’ original structure and function. Restoration can help us achieve Sustainable Development Goals. While we can restore biodiversity, structure, and function to damaged ecosystems, ecological restoration is no substitute for conservation, and the promise of restoration can be used to justify the destruction of unsustainable uses.
The ecology of restoration is the scientific investigation and support of the practice of ecological restoration – the practice of the renewal and restoration of damaged, damaged or destroyed ecosystems, habitats and environments through active human intervention and action. Effective restoration requires an explicit objective or a clear policy that is formulated, accepted and codified.
Every year on June 5, World Environment Day marks the official start of the United Nations Decade to Restore the Ecosystem, a 10-year effort to halt and reverse the decline of the natural world. Restoring forests and ecosystems means reforestation in order to reduce the pressure on forest trees to grow again. Rethinking the way people grow and consume food can also help reduce the pressure on forests.
When healthy natural ecosystems are destroyed, vast amounts of carbon enter the atmosphere. So the first thing to do is stop the gradual destruction of the ecosystem, adds co-author Thomas Brooks, chief scientist of the International Union for Nature Conservation.
At many places, students work to restore ecosystems that have been damaged, damaged or destroyed. A group of landowners in Austria is learning how the climate and ecosystem benefit from tree plantings’ return to the natural cycle of forest growth. The study concluded that complete restoration is 1.3 times more cost-effective if it occurs in high-priority locations than opportunistic approaches. Additionally, the researchers also looked at how to ensure that restoration of the ecosystem does not reduce food production. They found that more than half of the land converted into arable and pasture land could be converted back into a natural ecosystem without affecting food supplies.
Adopting eco-friendly behaviour is the need of the hour to protect our environment. People can usher in small changes in daily practices without dramatically affecting lifestyles, exhibiting a greater preference for clean and green spaces, healthy surroundings, fresh air, clean water, landscaping, recycling waste materials – anything that conserves energy and fosters a healthy link between the human population and nature.
Businesses have a critical role in responding to environmental protection by integrating a precise action plan into their growth strategies. Equitable growth is all about balancing aspects of people, planet and profits – the anchors on which a sustainable and resilient economy gets constructed… Now is the time to integrate sustainability even while being digital, which can take us closer to a green digital economy and restore our ecosystems.
According to a UN study, ecosystem degradation is already affecting the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people – 40% of the world’s population. The World Environment Day 2021 campaign – “Recreate, Reimagine, Restore” – focuses on reversing the degradation of our ecosystems. The future is now, and we need to act fast.