By Dr. Arvind Kumar, President, India Water Foundation
While we can successfully restore biodiversity, structure, and function to a degraded ecosystem, ecological restoration is not a substitute for conservation, nor should the promise of restoration be used to justify destruction or unsustainable use. In reality, restoration may not succeed in re-establishing the full assemblage of native species or the full extent of the original ecosystem’s structure and function.
The emergence of COVID-19 has also shown just how disastrous the consequences of ecosystem loss can be. By shrinking the area of natural habitat for animals, we have created ideal conditions for pathogens – including coronaviruses – to spread.With this big and challenging picture, the World Environment Day is focus in the ecosystem restoration and its theme is “Reimagine. Recreate. Restore.” Ecosystem restoration means preventing, halting and reversing this damage – to go from exploiting nature to healing it. This World Environment Day will kick off the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), a global mission to revive billions of hectares, from forests to farmlands, from the top of mountains to the depth of the sea. Only with healthy ecosystems can we enhance people’s livelihoods, counteract climate change and stop the collapse of biodiversity.Huge progress is needed to meet the Sustainable Development Goals, from eliminating poverty and fighting disease to safeguarding biodiversity. We need to bend the curve on biodiversity loss – a frightening trend that may lead to the extinction of 1 million species.Healthy ecosystems are vital to meeting those goals. Restoring them is a massive challenge. But more and more people realize that we must change our ways and move urgently to protect and rebuild nature for the sake of future generations and out of love for the world we live in.
Ecosystem restoration seeks to initiate or accelerate ecosystem recovery following damage, degradation, or destruction.Restoration practitioners do not carry out the actual work of ecosystem recovery. Rather, they create the conditions needed for recovery so the plants, animals, and microorganisms can carry out the work of recovery themselves. Assisting recovery can be as simple as removing an invasive species or reintroducing a lost species or a lost function (like fire); or as complex as altering landforms, planting vegetation, changing the hydrology, and reintroducing wildlife.
The goal of ecological restoration is to return a degraded ecosystem to its historic trajectory, not its historic condition. The ecosystem may not necessarily recover to its former state since contemporary ecological realities, including global climate change, may cause it to develop along an altered trajectory, just as these same realities may have changed the trajectory of nearby undisturbed ecosystems. History plays an important role in restoration, but contemporary conditions must also be taken into consideration.
When is restoration complete?
Ecological restoration aims to re-establish a self-organizing ecosystem on a trajectory to reach full recovery. While restoration activities can often place a degraded ecosystem on an initial trajectory of recovery relatively quickly, full recovery of the ecosystem can take years, decades, or even hundreds of years. For example, while we can initiate a forest restoration process by planting trees, for full recovery to be achieved, the site should be a fully functioning forest with mature trees in the age-classes representative of a mature native forest. If there were 500-year-old trees in the forest that was destroyed, then the restoration should logically take hundreds of years to achieve full recovery. During that recovery period, unforeseen barriers to recovery may be encountered, or additional restoration activities may become possible at later stages of development. Thus, while individual restoration activities may be completed, in most cases the restoration process continues as the ecosystem recovers and matures.
Investing in ecosystems is investing in our future
World Environment Day 2021 celebrations, calls for urgent action to revive our damaged ecosystems. From forests to peatlands to coasts, we all depend on healthy ecosystems for our survival. Ecosystems are defined as the interaction between living organisms – plants, animals, people – with their surroundings. This includes nature, but also human-made systems such as cities or farms. Ecosystem restoration is a global undertaking at massive scale. It means repairing billions of hectares of land – an area greater than China or the USA – so that people have access to food, clean water and jobs. It means bringing back plants and animals from the brink of extinction, from the peaks of mountains to the depths of the sea.
For too long, we have been exploiting and destroying our planet’s ecosystems. Every three seconds, the world loses enough forest to cover a football pitch and over the last century we have destroyed half of our wetlands. Earth needs help. The climate emergency, the loss of nature and deadly pollution threaten to destroy our home and eliminate many of the millions of species that share this beautiful planet with us. But this degradation is not inevitable. We have the power and the knowledge to reverse the harm and restore the Earth – if we act now. As much as 50 per cent of our coral reefs have already been lost and up to 90 per cent of coral reefs could be lost by 2050, even if global warming is limited to an increase of 1.5°C. Ecosystem loss is depriving the world of carbon sinks, like forests and peatlands, at a time humanity can least afford it. Global greenhouse gas emissions have grown for three consecutive years and the planet is one pace for potentially catastrophic climate change. Ecosystems are dynamic communities of plants, animals, and microorganisms interacting with their physical environment as a functional unit. These communities can be damaged, degraded, or destroyed by human activity.
Accelerate Ecosystem Recovery
Damage refers to an acute and obvious harmful impact upon an ecosystem such as selective logging, road building, poaching, or invasions of non-native species. Degradation refers to chronic human impacts resulting in the loss of biodiversity and the disruption of an ecosystem’s structure, composition, and functionality. Examples include: long-term grazing impacts, long-term over fishing or hunting pressure, and persistent invasions by non-native species. Destruction is the most severe level of impact, when degradation or damage removes all macroscopic life and commonly ruins the physical environment. Ecosystems are destroyed by such activities as land clearing, urbanization, coastal erosion, and mining. Restoration seeks to initiate or accelerate ecosystem recovery following damage, degradation, or destruction.But it also includes the many small actions everyone can take, every day: growing trees, greening our cities, rewilding our gardens or cleaning up trash alongside rivers and coasts. Restoring ecosystems carries substantial benefits for people. For every dollar invested in restoration, at least seven to thirty dollars in returns for society can be expected. Restoration also creates jobs in rural areas where they are most needed. Some countries have already invested in restoration as part of their strategies to bounce back from COVID-19. Others are turning to restoration to help them adapt to a climate that is already changing.
he UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration will succeed if people pull together as communities, nations and as a global movement. As well as getting involved in on-the-ground restoration and taking responsibility for your personal impact on the environment, you can spread the word about how healthy ecosystems are the foundation for human well-being, and that there is a lot that we can all do to protect them.This is vital because rebuilding ecosystems requires action from everyone, everywhere. It is also crucial to generate political momentum for restoration, because many of the underlying causes of degradation must be addressed at the national or international level. For example, only governments can change damaging economic policies, establish networks of protected areas and rein in pollution and climate change.Political leaders and other decision makers who grasp this challenge can act boldly if they know that millions of people stand beside them. So become an advocate for ecosystems and grow #GenerationRestoration into a movement that transforms our planet’s future. Here are some ways to amplify the message on World Environment Day and every day for the next decade.
