Story | 25 Jul, 2016

Event: Building regional cooperation on forest landscape restoration in Africa

More than 750 million hectares of deforested and degraded land in Africa can be restored, to the benefit of vulnerable local communities and the environment. To catalyse regional collaboration on this immense potential, two high-level meetings are taking place in Kigali, Rwanda this week.

Nature-based Solutions, including forest landscape restoration approaches, can contribute significantly to climate change mitigation if they adhere to the IUCN Global Standard for NbS and are funded appropriately.

Photo: Carig Beatty/IUCN

The Government of Rwanda, the Secretariat of the East African Community and IUCN, supported by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB), are organising a Bonn Challenge ministerial roundtable on forest landscape restoration (FLR). This is being held in conjunction with a technical workshop on FLR research hosted by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The roundtable will highlight leadership on FLR from over 20 countries in Africa and encourage more than 50 environtment leaders, ministers and experts to explore opportunities for collaboration by providing a platform for them to share their experiences. Importantly, the sessions will explore success stories of FLR and Bonn Challenge implementation, with a key focus on identifying the policy and institutional conditions necessary to enable FLR and the mechanisms used to leverage financing for FLR initiatives. New commitments to be made at the meeting are expected to take the global commitment to 100 million hectares.

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Restoration commitments from Africa announced in Kigali