YEREVAN, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) -- Around 252 million hectares of ecosystems worldwide are under restoration, but progress remains insufficient to reach the global target for 2030, according to a UN report published Thursday at the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP17) in the Armenian capital Yerevan.
Titled "Restoration progress report: Nature's comeback -- Scaling ecosystem restoration for people and planet," the report was jointly published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the United Nations Environment Programme and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
The report takes stock of global ecosystem restoration halfway through the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, providing a comprehensive assessment of restoration efforts across terrestrial, freshwater, marine and coastal ecosystems.
It warns that the world remains off track to achieve Target 2 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which calls for at least 30 percent of degraded ecosystems to be under effective restoration by 2030. Countries have pledged to restore around 1 billion hectares, but the pace of restoration needs to triple to meet the 2030 target.
Terrestrial ecosystems make up approximately 92 percent of the total documented restoration area covered by the report. Meanwhile, recorded restoration efforts in freshwater, marine and coastal ecosystems remain limited, highlighting the need to strengthen monitoring and reporting in these areas.
Drawing on China's 7th National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the report also examines the country's ecosystem restoration efforts. According to country-level data compiled in the assessment, China has the world's largest documented area of ecosystems under restoration.
Yelena Finegold, one of the report's authors, said accelerating global ecosystem restoration would require increased financing, stronger cross-sectoral planning and coordination, as well as greater capacity to implement restoration activities and monitor progress. ■
