Photo: IUCN / Anushree Bhattacharjee
The 2020 target was launched at a high level event in Bonn in 2011 organised by the Government of Germany and IUCN, and was later endorsed and extended to 2030 by the New York Declaration on Forests of the 2014 UN Climate Summit. To date, 74 governments, private associations and companies have pledged over 210 million hectares to the Challenge.
The Bonn Challenge is an implementation vehicle for national priorities such as water and food security and rural development while simultaneously helping countries contribute to the achievement of international climate change, biodiversity and land degradation commitments.
The restoration of 150 million hectares of degraded and deforested lands in biomes around the world – in line with the forest landscape restoration (FLR) approach – will create approximately US$ 84 billion per year in net benefits that could bring direct additional income opportunities for rural communities. About 90% of this value is potentially tradable, meaning that it encompasses market-related benefits. Achieving the 350 million hectare goal will generate about US$ 170 billion per year in net benefits from watershed protection, improved crop yields and forest products, and could sequester up to 1.7 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annually.
Members of the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration (GPFLR) are not only building global political support for restoration but also providing policy and technical support to the definition and implementation of Bonn Challenge commitments in countries around the world. This includes IUCN through its Forest Landscape Restoration Regional Hubs in Kigali, Yaoundé, Bangkok, San Jose, Quito, Suva and Washington DC.
Multi-country programmes such as The Restoration Initiative (TRI), supported by the Global Environment Facility and led by IUCN in partnership with UNEP and FAO, are also catalysing implementation and providing models for collaboration.
A growing suite of “home grown” high-level processes is emerging in support of the Bonn Challenge, driven by the political will of countries and regional institutions. Regional collaboration platforms such as AFR100 in Africa, ECCA30 in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus and Intiative 20x20 in Latin America, and international initiatives such as the the FAO FLR Mechanism and CBD Forest Ecosystem Restoration Initiative also contribute to and support the Bonn Challenge.
Bonn Challenge Resources
►The Bonn Challenge barometer profiles leadership and quantifiable progress on implementation of the Bonn Challenge and forest landscape restoration.
►The Bonn Challenge website managed by IUCN tracks all the Bonn Challenge commitments and related details.
► The InfoFLR website is your first stop for news, resources and updates on FLR around the world.
► Bonn Challenge overview videos:
