The United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021–2030 (hereafter “UN Decade”) recognizes the critical need to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of the world’s ecosystems. Effective restoration of degraded ecosystems is of paramount importance for recovering biodiversity, ecosystem health and integrity, ecosystem goods and services, climate-change mitigation and human health and well-being. UN Decade partners, through a consultative process, offered ten principles for ecosystem restoration to create a shared vision and increase the likelihood of achieving the highest level of recovery possible.

To facilitate application of these principles to restoration projects, the Standards of practice to guide ecosystem restoration (hereafter, Standards of practice) provides key recommendations for the entire restoration process, which can be applicable across all sectors of society, land or sea uses, ecosystems and regions, and to the broad array of ecosystem restoration activities under the UN Decade. The goal of this document is to provide an overview of the Standards of practice.