UN report records 252 million hectares under restoration, but warns 2030 goals are off track

A UN assessment launched at the COP17 biodiversity conference in Armenia on 29 October says 252 million hectares of ecosystems are under restoration across 149 countries. It describes the documented effort as the largest to date, but says countries remain off track for their 2030 restoration commitments.

Most of that area is on land. The assessment records 11 million hectares of freshwater ecosystems and 5.7 million hectares of marine and coastal ecosystems under restoration. Those smaller totals matter because the report says aquatic ecosystems are degrading at the fastest rates. It also warns that limited monitoring may mean the aquatic figures understate work already underway.

How restoration compares with the 2030 targets

The findings come during the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which runs from 2021 to 2030. The assessment was produced by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN Environment Programme and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. It draws on national reporting and global monitoring initiatives to assess areas under restoration, rather than claiming that every damaged ecosystem has fully recovered.

Funding needed to expand restoration

The assessment calls for annual restoration finance to rise from US$64 billion to US$296 billion by 2030, an increase of more than fourfold. It identifies agroforestry, restorative reforestation, peatland and seagrass restoration among the largest areas of estimated investment need. Those figures show the scale of the proposed expansion, particularly for habitats where recorded progress is weakest.

The UN assessment projects that such investment could generate up to 32 million jobs worldwide by 2030. It reports that restoration activity has already created more than one million green jobs. The first figure is an estimate of potential employment; the second describes jobs the assessment says have been created.