By Joyce Ojanji
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have announced the first World Restoration Flagships for this year, tackling pollution, unsustainable exploitation, and invasive species in three continents.
The three new flagships comprise restoration initiatives in the coral-rich Northern Mozambique Channel Region, more than 60 of Mexico’s islands and the Mar Menor in Spain, Europe’s first ecosystem with legal personhood. The winning initiatives were announced at an event during the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France, and are now eligible for UN support.
According to Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, these World Restoration Flagships show how biodiversity protection, climate action, and economic development are deeply interconnected.
“After decades of taking the ocean for granted, we are witnessing a great shift towards restoration. But the challenge ahead of us is significant and we need everyone to play their part. To deliver our restoration goals, our ambition must be as big as the ocean we must protect,” she noted.
The Northern Mozambique Channel boasts 35 per cent of the coral reefs found in the entire Indian Ocean and is considered its seedbed and nursery. Agricultural run-off, overfishing, and climate change threaten this economically and ecologically important stretch of ocean.
Comoros, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Tanzania are already working together to manage, protect, and restore almost 87,200 hectares of interconnected land and seascapes, benefitting both nature and people.
Also, actions undertaken today to maintain it include restoration of blue and green forests by creating interconnected restoration corridors, mangroves, and coral reef ecosystems, and improving fisheries management. These efforts, championed by the non-governmental organization (NGO) World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and UN agencies alike, encompass multiple levels and sites, spanning both land and seascapes.
With adequate financing, 4.85 million hectares are expected to be restored by 2030. This is expected to improve communities’ well-being and socio-economic development, including a 30 per cent increase in household income in target areas, and create over 2,000 jobs and 12 community-based enterprises, while integrating indigenous practices.
Additionally, Mexico’s seabird islands, recognized worldwide as vital hotspots for biodiversity, particularly for being home to one-third of the world’s seabird species, the Mexican islands had long suffered the negative impacts of invasive species.
Efforts include removing 60 populations of invasive species and restoring seabird colonies, as well as forest landscape restoration. Coupled with implementing biosecurity protocols, the comprehensive programme restores the island’s endemic richness and supports local island communities.
Moreover, Spain, The Mar Menor lagoon, with its famously transparent water, the Mar Menor lagoon is essential to the region’s identity, local tourism, small-scale fishing and unique flora and fauna, including water birds. Surrounded by one of Europe’s key agricultural regions, it is the continent’s largest saltwater lagoon, and its biodiversity has successfully adapted to conditions of extreme temperatures, high salinity, and low levels of nutrients.
However, nitrate discharges from intensive agricultural activity, as well as other polluting land and marine activities, have led to the lagoon’s rapid degradation, including the emergence of damaging algal blooms.
A positive turn came when over half a million citizens mobilized in response to episodes of “green soup” and fish kills and supported a Popular Legislative Initiative to make the Mar Menor a legal entity with rights. Actions were also promoted from the justice system to demand the application of environmental liability regulations and possible criminal liability into the pollution.
The total area targeted for restoration amounts to 8,770 hectares, representing 7 per cent of the entire basin flowing into the Mar Menor. This area would support Spain’s climate change objectives, including its overall national target of restoring 870,000 hectares by 2030. For one of the proposed interventions, the Green Belt, it is estimated to absorb more than 82,256 tonnes CO₂ by 2040 – the equivalent of the annual greenhouse gas emissions from almost 14,000 people in Spain.
World Restoration Flagships are chosen as the best examples of ongoing, large-scale and long-term ecosystem restoration by a group of ecosystem restoration experts from the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration’s network. Selection follows a thorough review process with 15 criteria, embodying the 10 Restoration Principles of the UN Decade.
The World Restoration Flagship awards are part of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration – led by UNEP and FAO – which aims to prevent, halt, and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and in every ocean. The awards track notable initiatives that support global commitments to restore one billion hectares – an area larger than China – by 2030.
