Bonn Challenge: Objectives, Key Features, India’s Pledge and Progress

🌿 Environment & Ecology

Bonn Challenge

A Global Goal for Forest Landscape Restoration

🌍 Global Initiative 🌳 Forest Restoration 🤝 Germany & IUCN 📅 Launched 2011

🔍 Quick Facts

Launched2011

ByGermany & IUCN

2020 Target150 mn ha

2030 Target350 mn ha

India's Pledge26 mn ha by 2030

India's Progress21.7 mn ha (2011–20)

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🌍Introduction

The Bonn Challenge is a global initiative launched in 2011 by the Government of Germany and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The IUCN serves as the Secretariat of the Bonn Challenge.

🎯Objective

The Bonn Challenge is a global goal to bring 150 million hectares of degraded and deforested landscapes into restoration by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030.

The Bonn Challenge surpassed the 150-million-hectare milestone for pledges in 2017.

📋Key Features

It promotes Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR), which prioritises both biodiversity conservation and human livelihoods.

IUCN and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) coined the term forest landscape restoration in 2000 as a framework for managing landscapes, complementing both forest conservation and sustainable management.

The Bonn Challenge is a direct contribution to the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

It supports the achievement of international commitments, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Aichi Biodiversity Targets of the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD), and the Paris Agreement.

📖 Know more: Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) ▾

Forest landscape restoration (FLR) is the ongoing process of restoring the ecological functionality of degraded and deforested landscapes while enhancing the well-being of people who coexist with these places.

FLR prioritises both biodiversity conservation and human livelihoods. It is about using land sustainably in a variety of ways, such as new tree plantings, protected wildlife reserves, regenerated forests, ecological corridors, agroforestry, riverside plantings to protect waterways, managed plantations, and agriculture.

This mosaic of interacting land uses takes place within and across entire landscapes – a scale where ecological, social and economic priorities can be balanced.

FLR tailors to the local context using a variety of approaches. It relies on stakeholders to identify restoration objectives, and to draw on the latest science, best practices, and traditional and indigenous knowledge to choose intervention types.

For example, one country may only want to strengthen ecosystem resilience by increasing forest connectivity and diversity. Yet, a neighbouring country might prioritise carbon sequestration and water protection, planting trees for climate change mitigation and carbon credits and to protect rivers from sedimentation.

FLR is a process. It seeks to regain, improve and maintain a degraded or deforested landscape's vital ecological and social functions in the long-term, and build its resilience to ecological and societal changes.

🇮🇳India and the Bonn Challenge

India's Pledge

India had pledged to restore 13 million hectares with an additional eight million hectares by 2030.

In 2019, at the 14th United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, India revised its target to 26 million hectares by 2030.

Progress Achieved

India has restored 21.7 million hectares of degraded and deforested land between 2011 and 2020, according to the country's second progress report on the Bonn Challenge released by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This includes restoration through planted forests, natural regeneration, silviculture, agroforestry, and mangrove restoration.

Between 2011–2017, India had restored 9.8 million hectares, as reported in the first progress report.

Key Schemes Supporting Restoration

The report attributed the progress to the combination of national schemes such as the Compensatory Afforestation Fund, the Green India Mission, the National Afforestation Programme, and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, along with dedicated state-level greening efforts.

Leading States in Restoration

Telangana topped the list of states that restored the highest land area at 4.18 million hectares, through an agroforestry push of over 3.6 million hectares. Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh were among the other states leading restoration efforts, according to the report.

Climate Significance

About 461.14 million tonnes of carbon (343.66 million tonnes, accounting for plantation mortality) were estimated to be sequestered due to the restoration, according to the report.

Land Use, Land-use change, and the forestry sector are among the key avenues for sequestering the planet-warming carbon dioxide.

📖 Know more: Land Degradation in India ▾

In India, 1.45 million hectares, or 0.44 per cent of the total geographical area, experienced degradation between 2011-13 and 2018-19, while 97.85 million hectares, or 29.77 per cent of the country's geographical area, are affected by land degradation and desertification.