In the past few years, catastrophic wildfires, droughts, floods and other extreme weather events have occurred throughout the world with increasing frequency and severity. Critical earth system thresholds fundamental to the maintenance of existing ecosystems and human activities are likely to be exceeded, with increasing global warming,
especially beyond 2°C. As elsewhere, central and eastern Europe (CEE) is increasingly exposed to a range of climatic risks which have the potential to aggravate existing pressures on ecosystems and accelerate land degradation trends.

The CEE region is home to 20% of the world’s forests, and around 230 million hectares of both peatlands and croplands. Restoring and protecting the health and productivity of these managed and natural ecosystems is critical to stabilizing climate change, stopping biodiversity loss, and enhancing societal well-being at regional and global scales.
This Regional Thematic Report is the first comprehensive analysis of commitments under international and national initiatives promoting land and ecosystem restoration in the region. However, the area covered by restoration commitments – currently 13.5 million hectares, or 5% of the total degraded area – is not sufficient to address the
extent of degradation and loss in the region’s forests, croplands, grasslands, and peatlands

The central and eastern Europe (CEE) region includes unique high-carbon and biodiversity-rich terrestrial ecosystems which should be treated as global commons in need of protection, restoration and sustainable management.
• The region contains 20% of the world’s forests, covering 850 million hectares. The remnant native forest of central and eastern Europe is a unique biological asset and has a high conservation value
• The region includes nearly 230 million hectares of croplands, vital for global food security. The region produces more than 120 million tonnes of wheat, nearly 20% of current global outputs
• The region’s peatlands cover 226 million hectares and hold some of the world’s largest carbon stocks.The protection of the region’s peatlands is crucial to achieving the Paris agreement climate change targets
• The region is also host to a large fraction of the total Arctic and permafrost areas, the protection of which is fundamental to safeguarding both the climate and biodiversity

Trends in land use and land degradation differ significantly within the CEE region, due to its vast geographical
scale and rich ecological diversity. A range of direct and indirect drivers contributes to land degradation:
urbanization, wildfires, climate change and land tenure (due to a legacy of major political transitions in the
region). Re-establishing a more balanced and sustainable human interaction with these ecosystems is of crucial importance to regional and global sustainability.
• Approximately 16.5% of the region’s land is considered degraded according to the latest UNCCD baseline assessment
• The area of land used for human settlement increased by almost 80% between 2000 and 2018, with some
countries registering notably higher rates. This increase was largely at the expense of croplands, which have shrunk by 380,000 hectares since 2000. Land fragmentation and agro-economic instability have resulted in 52.5 million hectares of abandoned farmland in the region, of which 32.2 million hectares are in Russia
• While general trends indicate an overall increase in forest coverage since 2000, satellite-based observations show a total of 67 million hectares of tree cover was lost between 2000 and 2019. In many parts of the region, there have been significant losses of native forests, which provide more ecosystem services than reforested land and plantations
• Large parts of the region show stable (and not stressed) or improving land productivity. Yet over 10% of land exhibits early signs of stress, and 9.3% suffers from declining productivity
• Arctic and permafrost areas in the region are under immense pressure from climate change. Some studies estimate that due to thawing, the amount of methane and carbon dioxide which could be released exceeds that currently present in the atmosphere by a factor of two to three... REad further from the publication