“Implementation of Forest Landscape Restoration under the Bonn Challenge initiative is happening at scale. We have been working with partners throughout the past decade ensuring restoration has been recognized as one of the most important efforts and prioritized for countries to guarantee that we are meeting the regional and local targets. It is very encouraging to see the Governments of Montenegro, North Macedonia and Ukraine join the initiative and we are grateful for their dedication to bring the new forest landscapes into restoration” stated Boris Erg, Director of the IUCN Regional office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at today’s meeting. “We will continue with our joint regional efforts to regain, improve and maintain a degraded or deforested landscape’s vital ecological and social functions in the long-term, and build its resilience to environmental and societal changes. We are also hoping to see more contributions from other countries in the region and to further achieving the restoration goals set in the Action Plan of the Green Agenda for the Western Balkans” he added.

During the meeting, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia also made promising commitments to the Bonn Challange to make effort in defining and restoring ecosystems.Two other countries joined the Bonn Challenge and the ECCA30, Turkey by pledging 2,3 million hectares, building on strong progress since 2010 and commitment to continue work through 2030, and Slovenia committing to restore more than 200,00 hectares of deforested land.

For a decade now, IUCN has been mobilizing global support for the Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) through the Bonn Challenge initiative - a global largest target to bring 150 million hectares of the degraded and deforested lands into restoration by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030. The 2020 target was launched in 2011 by the Government of Republic of Germany and IUCN, and was furthermore endorsed and extended by the New York Declaration on Forests at the 2014 UN Climate Summit.

      Photo: © Artem Bryzgalov from Unsplash

Since 2011, commitment under the Bonn Challenge raise from 5 countries to 74 pledges from 61 countries, 8 states and 5 associations totaling over 210 million hectares and covering all regions from Latin America, Africa, Asia to Caucasus and Central Asia.

In Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, the Bonn Challenge is supported under ECCA30, which aims at bringing 30 million hectares of degraded and deforested land into restoration by 2030. In 2018, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan pledged to restore over 2.5 million ha of forest landscape under the Bonn Challenge by 2030, followed by Azerbaijan joining with the pledge of 270,000 ha and Scotland with a pledge of 170,000 by 2030. With the new pledges, the FLR will be effectively implemented in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia surpassing the total of 4.4 million ha today. 

The Ministerial Declaration, which emphasised the requirement for voluntary and measurable forest landscape restoration commitments, was adopted at the Meeting.

Ahead of the meeting the Forest Landscape Restoration in Eastern and South-East Europe Study which identifies key drivers of forest degradation and the potential for forest landscape restoration was launched to support countries in the South-East Europe in preparing their restoration pledges.

More information about the outcomes of the Meeting available here.

Bonn Challenge: https://www.bonnchallenge.org/