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How do you restore a planet? With a shared and inspiring vision, an openness to new ideas and many willing hands.

Alarmed by widespread degradation, the climate crisis and plummeting biodiversity, governments last year declared 2021-2030 as the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (UN Decade). During the next 10 years, the initiative is aiming to halt and reverse degradation and raise awareness about the need for restoring the natural world and the many benefits it brings to humankind.

The decade begins next year but work is already underway to build the movement. Starting today, individuals, communities, businesses, governments and others can show their support for reversing the degradation of Earth’s natural systems and creating a more sustainable world.

Individuals and organizations are encouraged to not only use the Decade’s brand-new visual identity, but to make it their own. They can make use of various communication tools in up to eight languages to show that they are part of #GenerationRestoration.

Through a newly launched website, everyone interested in protecting and reviving ecosystems can learn how restoration works and how to get involved in the UN Decade. Groups and organizations can sign up and begin sharing their inspiration, experience and resources.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare how our health and well-being depend on the health of the planet,” said Inger Andersen, head of the United Nations Environment Programme. “Pulling together in a global movement for restoration is key to making our societies and economies stronger and fitter for the future.”

Every year, the world is losing 4.7 million hectares of forests – an area bigger than Denmark. In the last 100 years, half of the world’s wetlands have been degraded or drained. To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, prevent catastrophic climate change and save one million species on the verge of extinction, hundreds of millions of hectares need to be revived. This enormous task is too big for any one organization to undertake. Restoration is a global mission.

A strategy for restoration

A core team has spent months consulting with stakeholders from across the globe on how to achieve the UN Decade’s aims. Having considered more than 2,000 comments from officials, restoration experts, funding partners, indigenous peoples and youth, UNEP and FAO today released a strategy that will underpin the initiative.

A digital platform for the exchange of ideas and technical expertise is being designed for launch in early 2021.

“The strategy reflects how everyone has a role to play in addressing environmental problems that are now impacting all societies in all corners of the globe,” said Tim Christophersen, an ecosystems expert at the United Nations Environment Programme. “We need everyone on board in order to change minds, change behaviour and bring our societies and economies into harmony with nature.”