Two years ago, at COP 15, a landmark agreement was made. 188 governments adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), committing to halting and reversing the loss of nature. With governments gathered again at COP 16 in Colombia, protecting nature is back on the global agenda. And today, restoration is at the centre of these discussions.
Goal 2 of the framework is to restore at least 30% of degraded ecosystems by 2030, with widespread recognition that restoration plays a crucial role in reversing the loss of nature. Some scientists suggest ecosystem restoration has the potential to help prevent 60 percent of extinctions across the globe. It also has significant economic potential, with the UN estimating that restoring 350 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 could yield USD 9 trillion in ecosystem services.
With the 2030 deadline only six years away, decisive action on landscape restoration is needed immediately. This is a significant challenge for society, requiring political commitment and systemic change in the way we treat the planet. In the two years since COP 15, there have been some encouraging signs that commitment to ecosystem restoration is serious. In June this year, the European Union adopted their Nature Restoration Law, putting into place legally binding targets to restore degraded ecosystems across the continent.
But how do we ensure we’re on track to meeting the targets set out in the Global Biodiversity Framework? There is still a scarcity of evidence on the impact and effectiveness of restoration, and investment in monitoring is lacking. This is something that the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme is working hard to change. Since 2019, we have supported our project partners to put over 160,000 hectares of land and sea under restoration, and we have been tracking their progress through our monitoring framework and a set of Key Performance Indicators, aligned to global frameworks including the Global Biodiversity Framework.
In this interview with Dr David Thomas, director of the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme, we reflect on what we’ve learned in the last six years of gathering evidence for restoration at scale, and how these lessons can be applied by the restoration community, whether you’re a practitioner, donor or policymaker.
Gathering evidence for restoration is challenging but worthwhile
Restoration takes time. Forests need time to grow, species take time to bounce back, and it might be decades before there are real signs of progress. “The measurable impacts of restoration may take years to appear – long beyond the typical 3 to 5-year project timeframe,” says David. “While it is easy to measure activity – for example number of trees planted, or number of bison reintroduced into an ecosystem – it may be decades before you see the wider ecosystem recovering in response to these actions.” And unfortunately, most donors are unwilling or unable to fund monitoring beyond the period of their grant. To help address this, the Endangered Landscapes and Seascapes Programme will now be supporting collection of data for the most important indicators for up to 10 years from the start of funding – an important innovation made possible by our funder Arcadia.
Another issue is that measuring some of the most important changes – and attributing them to restoration – is challenging. “Repairing a degraded peat bog plays a part in restoring a hillside’s ability to store water and prevent flooding downstream, but measuring that impact is complex and requires equipment and expertise that are beyond the reach of many projects,” David explains.
Despite these barriers, gathering evidence on the effectiveness of restoration is both worthwhile and necessary. “Those responsible for and with the opportunity to restore ecosystems, whether they be private landowners, budget holders, government agencies or NGOs, have to make decisions about how and where to spend their money,” says David. “Even ‘passive’ restoration where nature does the work comes at a cost – and has consequences. Monitoring the results of restoration can answer some of these questions and so inform management decisions and policy so that restoration interventions have the best possible outcomes.”
This data can also be used to convince sceptics that restoring natural ecosystems is beneficial. “Economies, our health and wellbeing and the health of the planet are dependent on nature, so it would seem pretty obvious that we need to look after these precious natural assets – and restore them where they have been degraded,” says David. “But as opposition to the EU Nature Restoration Law demonstrated, there are still those who are hostile to the idea, and stacking up evidence of the benefits of restoring will help strengthen arguments for investing in repairing damaged ecosystems.”
Combining high-level, policy-relevant indicators with project-specific monitoring
Our approach to monitoring is carefully structured and takes into account different purposes and audiences. “All projects funded by the Programme have indicators that monitor their outcomes,” says David. These are project-specific indicators that sit within our Landscape & Seascape Restoration Monitoring Framework. They measure change within the landscape or seascape in relation to its habitats and species, ecosystem processes, economy or institutions.
“Across the programme and the landscapes being restored there are over 200 such indicators and we are starting to make summaries of this monitoring data available via our Measuring Impact Hub. The significance of this monitoring is that it measures change in parameters relevant to individual landscapes over the long-term,” he explains. For the most important indicators the programme will support projects to continue to gather data for up to 10 years.
“It’s important to think about the purpose of monitoring when choosing indicators – how will the data be used, who is the audience, and is it information that the audience needs and that will be persuasive? Linking to policy is one way of making sure that what you are measuring is relevant, but within an individual landscape the most appropriate indicators might relate to the population of species that are valued locally, reduced incidence of damaging floods and wildfires, or nature-based employment linked to the restored landscape.” – Dr David Thomas, Director of the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme
At an overall level, we use Key Performance Indicators to measure our impact. These indicators are used by all the projects we support, using consistent methods which allows us to sum the results and capture the bigger picture. “Our KPIs have been designed to relate to Multilateral Environment Agreements (MEAs) like the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Sustainable Development Goals,” says David. “These MEAs have indicator frameworks – the Global Biodiversity Framework in the case of the CBD – to measure the progress being made nationally and globally. By aligning our KPIs to those frameworks it makes the indicators directly relevant to global policy and to national commitments and obligations. This can be hugely important in building support for the Programme’s work.” We’ve been tracking this data since the programme first started funding ecosystem restoration in January 2019.
Time is running out, but there is hope
Restoration at scale is essential if we are going to stem the dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. “To make progress we need to work in large areas – landscapes and seascapes – recognising the complex of ecological, economic and social linkages that determine environmental outcomes,” David explains. “Ecosystem restoration can help communities to adapt to a changing climate – restoring floodplains, forests and peatlands that store water and reduce flood risks, creating forests where fire is less likely to spread because of their patchiness and species composition. These are important messages, and backed up with evidence they can help build support for restoration.”
Visit our new Impact page to find out more. To explore our KPIs in detail, visit our KPI Dashboard.
