The Restoration Initiative (TRI) is a program to restore and maintain degraded and deforested landscapes at scale. It has been developed for consideration by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and other donors through close collaboration between three GEF Agencies that will jointly implement the program – FAO, IUCN (as lead), and UNEP.

The program will unite ten countries with up-to-date technical knowledge and innovative financing tools in support of the Bonn Chal-lenge goal of restoring 150 million ha worldwide by 2020. And it will do so by helping countries overcome existing barriers to restoration and generate global environmental benefits while furthering national sustainable development goals.

ContextContinued forest and land degradation pose serious obstacles to elimi-nating poverty, hunger and biodiversity loss in many parts of the world today. It also limits the ability of both women and men, and farmers and local communities, to adapt to the impacts of climate change. This degradation process increases competition for scarce resources, lea-ding to potential conflicts between users and exacerbating imbalances, such as gender inequality. These processes threaten the security of food, water and energy; lead to the loss of biodiversity and critical eco-system services and land degradation; impact the livelihoods, health, well-being and resilience capacity of millions of people (FAO, 2015); and have even been linked to serious social unrest. Furthermore,

continued forest and land degradation means continued greenhouse gas emissions and reduced capacity to sequester carbon.

Given the right tools and incentives, much of the deforested and degraded estate can be restored – enhancing ecological integrity and improving human well-being in deforested and degraded lands through introduction and better management of trees and woody plants, woodlands and forests at the landscape level.

The Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration (GPFLR) has identified more than 2 billion hectares of deforested and degraded landscapes worldwide – an area larger than South America – where opportunities for forest landscape restoration (FLR) may be found (See Figure 1).

Program designWhile restoration of degraded and deforested lands and associated carbon stocks is gaining traction with increasing awareness and commitment, TRI countries face a number of common barriers to implementing FLR at the needed scale. These include insufficient po-litical prioritization of restoration, insufficient awareness of restoration opportunities and approaches, absence of an enabling environment for investment in FLR, governance and land tenure issues, limited capacity to manage and plan for FLR, failure to adequately incorpo-rate gender considerations, and inadequate mobilization of resources.

The Restoration InitiativeFostering innovation and integration in support of the Bonn ChallengeNovember 2015

IUCN / Intu Boedhihartono

TRI has been designed to address these key barriers to effective and sustainable forest and landscape restoration, and do so in a way that is tailored to national and sub-national restoration needs. Support will be provided under the program’s four components:

1. Policy development and integration – accelerate increased national and sub-national commitment to FLR by filling knowledge gaps and identification and uptake of policy and regulatory solutions.

2. Implementation of restoration programs and complementary land management initiatives – facilitate and support action at scale using international best practices most appropriate to each country context.

3. Institutional development, financing, and upscaling – strengthen institutions essential to implementation of restoration and complementary initiatives; unlock and mobilize domestic and external funding.

4. Exchange of experiences, new tools and partnerships – share innovative experiences, awareness raising, policy influence, enhance coordination among the implementing agencies and others, and develop and apply new tools: Bonn Challenge Baro-meter of Progress, Enabling Investments Rapid Diagnostic Tool, and Typology of Forest and Landscape Restoration.

Key characteristics • Ten partnering countries: Cameroon, Central African Republic,

China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sao Tome & Principe, Tanzania. Additional interested countries will be welcomed to request joining the Program in future, including those from regions not yet well

Figure 1. Global potential forest and landscape restoration opportunities. Source: GPFLR

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represented in this thematic TRI program (such as from Latin America, Mediterranean/Near East and Pacific).

• Diversity of restoration and integrated landscape management approaches, including agroforestry, natural regeneration, planted forests and woodlots, silviculture, mangrove and riparian restoration, wetlands and rangelands management and restoration, and watershed protection.

• Development of “bankable” business models for investing in restoration and instruments for mitigating investment risks to catalyze private sector engagement in FLR.

• Unlocking of significant additional financial resources from dif-ferent partners / international cooperation organizations thereby strengthening international commitment on FLR in the context of the Bonn Challenge.

• Creation of synergies, provision of a wider array of tools and resources to national projects, and leveraging of key partner-ships to yield cost savings and realize greater impact, consistent with the GEF programmatic approach.

To address global challenges, including the need for biodiversity conservation, mitigating and adapting to climate change and enhan-cing food security, it is critical to restore the world’s deforested and degraded lands. TRI brings together expertise from several multila-teral organizations with a range of technical partners and support from multiple financing partners to put FLR into practice at scale in ten countries with significant restoration potential.