By Will Anderson
The world’s ecosystems are under threat.

Fires are turning biodiverse forests in California and wetlands in Argentina and Brazil into charred landscapes. The ocean is getting warmer and more acidic, bleaching colorful, fish-filled coral reefs across the Seychelles. The abuse of the soil, exacerbated by overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, is damaging the long-term economic and ecological health of struggling farm communities in China.

These threats — such as commodity agriculture, climate change and overfishing — are specific to every land and seascape. But all forms of ecosystem degradation have one thing in common: When people hurt ecosystems, they also hurt economies, biodiversity and the climate.

The damage is reversible, though. Restoring degraded ecosystems is not only possible, but it makes economic sense, too.

Thousands of organizations and millions of people — from entrepreneurs in South Africa to government officials in El Salvador to youth activists in the United States — have banded together to create the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a 10-year effort to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems worldwide. They are building on work from the past decade — such as partnerships like AFR100 in Africa, where 30 countries pledged to restore an area of land the size of Egypt — and are turning it into action on the ground.
Why is it Beneficial to Restore Degraded Ecosystems?

Restoring landscapes and marine ecosystems is urgent not only because they are home to countless plant and animals, but because the services they provide are worth an estimated $125 trillion every year to the global economy.
Healthy ecosystems and landscapes support industries like farming, fishing, forestry and tourism, which employ 1.2 billion people. In the United States alone, ecosystem restoration is a $25 billion industry that employs 220,000 people, more than each of the coal, logging or steel industries.
And globally, each $1 invested in restoring degraded landscapes can bring $7-30 in economic returns.

Healthy ecosystems are also a lynchpin in the fight against climate change, itself a major driver of ocean and landscape degradation. If nature were protected and restored at scale, it could provide more than one-third of the annual emissions reductions the world needs by 2030 to keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees C (2.6 degrees F). The world’s forests alone store 1.5 times more carbon than the U.S. emits every year (and could soak up 23% of global CO2 emissions every year if we let them naturally regenerate).
What Are Some Examples of Ecosystem Restoration?

So, what are the key ecosystems that are people are restoring, and how are they doing it? Five examples of ecosystem restoration in particular are critical for the health and safety of people, biodiversity and the climate.
READ FURTTHER FROM THE SOURCE