United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) focuses on restoring degraded ecosystems.

UNEP has released a report underlining the benefits of restoring natural ecosystems. The report advocates that far from being a tax on growth and development, the rehabilitation of nature-based assets will generate jobs, wealth and restoration of multi-trillion dollar services.

The report uses case studies to outline the benefits of forest restoration to biodiversity and conservation and the impacts on human livelihoods and wellbeing. The varied ecosystems of each case study outline the many different benefits which forest restoration could offer.

Instituto Terra, a non-profit organisation that establishes nurseries to replant denuded areas in the Mata Atlantica, is mentioned for its services to biodiversity, water regulation, carbon storage and preventing soil erosion.

Protecting already intact ecosystems is of course the most logical and cost effective strategy in climate change mitigation, yet more than 60 per cent of global ecosystems - from marshes and coral reefs to tropical forests and soils - are already degraded. On this basis, the report says that restoration must now gain an equal importance.

Some of the benefits of Forest Restoration:

· Increased and higher quality habitats for animals and plants;

· A secure and high-quality supply of water;

· Prevention and reduction of land degradation;

· A secure source of biomass and biofuel energy;

· Environmentally sound and socially acceptable carbon sequestration;

· Adequate and sustainable income and employment opportunities for rural communities;

· Sustainable source of timber for forest industries and local communities;

· Sound return on investment for forestry investors;

· Increased resilience and resistance to climate change;

· Additional sources of non-timber forest products such as medicinal plants and marketable goods;

· Recreation and tourism opportunities;

· Increased property values near restored areas;

· Enhanced economic and environmental security and mitigation of risk form global economic and environmental

Source: Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration (GPFLR),

http://www.ideastransformlandscapes.org