As the climate crisis becomes ever more serious, each Earth Day that comes along takes on extra significance. This year’s theme is Restore Our Earth, which focuses not only on recovering from the effects of COVID-19, but implementing nature-based solutions that will have lasting, transformative impacts on our planet.

While scientists confirm that climate change and loss of biodiversity are irrefutable, they also emphasize that it’s not too late to stem the tide. Finding sustainable, resilient solutions will require innovative thinking in all aspects of society — how we grow food, obtain our energy, use land, and dispose of chemicals and waste.

Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, CEO and Chairperson of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), has stressed the need to invest in the protection and rehabilitation of nature to support a clean, resilient, green, and blue pandemic recovery. In a recent blog, he compared the challenges of 2021 to the waves he’s accustomed to surfing in his free time. He wrote, “It is 100 percent possible to balance the needs of the population with the needs of the planet. Like two feet on the board.”

This Earth Day, the GEF is highlighting nine initiatives from its most recent work program, designed to help developing countries across the world protect and regenerate nature in the wake of COVID-19.

Protecting sea turtles and seagrass in Madagascar

Sea turtles play a critical role in Madagascar, a global biodiversity hotspot. They naturally clean up and help maintain the health of marine ecosystems, particularly seagrass meadows and coral reefs. Due to environmental pressures such as global warming, coastal development, pollution, and wildlife trafficking, sea turtle populations have declined sharply in recent years. A new GEF-funded project, implemented by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), is supporting efforts by Madagascar’s Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development to protect the country’s sea turtles and seagrass meadows from a host of human-caused threats. The link between biodiversity loss and the rise of zoonotic diseases is more apparent than ever before. This initiative aims to harness this awareness to convene community members, scientists, and policy-makers to cooperate and take action on the conservation of these keystone species for the benefit of people and our planet.

In Benin, investing in mangroves for climate resilience

Mangrove forests are key sources of food, fuel, and income for many coastal communities living in the West African country of Benin. They help protect coastal habitats from wave and wind erosion, reduce pollutant levels in the water, and safeguard near-shore reefs. All of these benefits are at risk of being lost as wetlands and lagoons continue to shrink.

The Gambia invests in valuing and safeguarding biodiversity

The Gambia, the smallest country in mainland Africa, is home to significant biodiversity, including a wide range of medicinal plants that Gambian people depend upon for their health and livelihoods.

Safeguarding iconic threatened species and their habitats

As one of the seventeen megadiverse countries in the world, China harbors nearly ten percent of all plant species and fourteen percent of vertebrate animals found on Earth. A new initiative funded by the GEF and led by the United Nations Development Programme and the Chinese National Forestry and Grassland Administration aims to conserve critical habitat of five iconic wildlife species: the giant panda, the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey, the Western black crested gibbon, the Indochinese gray langur, and the stump-tailed macaque. Through landscape restoration and the creation of ecological corridors, the initiative will help preserve the habitats of these primate species in Yunnan Province and Giant Panda National Park.

Bolstering biosafety in Southern Africa

While genetically modified organisms such as seeds and plants have been viewed as possible solutions to disease resistance and satisfying growing food demands, they may also pose threats to biodiversity in some of the most species-rich regions in the world.

Investing in land health for sustainable recovery

The Bahamas is a biodiversity hotspot with over 1,100 species of vascular plants and 406 known species of amphibians, birds, mammals, and reptiles. Recent strains on Bahamian land have impacted land health in the archipelago of 700 islands and cays. Deforestation, mining, and freshwater pollution have led to biodiversity loss and food insecurity amidst the global pandemic. To protect these ecosystems and ensure food availability, the country has partnered with the GEF and UNEP to invest in more climate-resilient and regenerative food production practices. As it gets underway, the initiative will seek to introduce regenerative agricultural practices to a total of 10,000 hectares of land on seven target islands. READ FURTETHER FROM THE LINK ABOVE