Land restoration is a proven and cost-effective strategy that can jumpstart a green economic recovery. It creates green jobs, uplifts rural communities, and delivers significant co-benefits for human health, biodiversity, and climate change. Land restoration offers multiple pathways towards a green recovery and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. We have the tools to achieve this - responsible land governance, investments that protect and restore nature, and coherent, long-term policies and incentives – but we must learn from the past.

COVID-19 is causing enormous damage and developing countries are among those hardest hit, compounding existing challenges of poverty, conflict, food and water shortages, and climate emergencies.

But COVID-19 economic stimulus and recovery packages introduced around the world are on a scale never seen before. This presents policy makers with the golden opportunity to build forward better together, to recover from the virus and at the same time forge a more equitable and sustainable world to mitigate the crises of the future. However, it is calculated that only 2.5 percent of all Covid-19 recovery spending will have “positive green characteristics,” such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions and restoring natural capital.