The Role of Faith-Based Organizations in Ecosystem Restoration

Objectives

1. To raise awareness on the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration;

2. To explore the role that FBOs play towards the achievement of the objectives of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration;

3. To promote the mainstreaming of ecosystem restoration as a core activity amongst religious communities;

4. To discuss synergy between Faith-based initiatives and environment sustainability.

Introduction

Restoration of ecosystem is fundamental to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, mainly those on climate change, poverty eradication, food security, water and biodiversity conservation. The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is a global effort aimed at restoring the planet and ensuring One Health for people and nature.

The Decade unites the world behind a common goal: preventing, halting and reversing the degradation of ecosystems worldwide. Forests, grasslands, croplands, wetlands, savannahs, and other terrestrial to inland water ecosystems, marine and coastal ecosystems and urban environments—all of them are in dire need of some level of protection and restoration.

One main objective of The Decade is to accelerate existing global and regional restoration goals, such as the Bonn Challenge, whose goal is to restore 350 million km2 (almost the size of India), and the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100), which targets to restore 100 million hectares of degraded terrestrial ecosystems by 2030.

Towards the achievement of the AFR100 objective, Kenya, in 2016, made a commitment to restore 5.1m ha of its degraded lands by 2030, as a contribution to the global effort to mitigate climate change. This commitment is also in fulfillment to the country's 2010 Constitution which recognizes every citizen's fundamental right to a clean and healthy environment and as part of the constitutional principles in the management of the environment and natural resources, upholds their equitable access to and sustainable and productive management of land and other natural resources. Regrettably, unsustainable human activities have given rise to the unabated degradation of Kenya’s natural resources and critical ecosystems , resulting in exacerbated impacts of climate change, loss of biodiversity, and threatened food security and water supplies, leading to the continued devastation of communities. This incredible challenge of restoring these ecosystems can only be met if we can get everyone involved — including Member States, local governments, partners from the private sector, academia, civil society and Faith-Based Organizations—come together to find and implement viable, lasting solutions, for effective delivery of the restoration goals.

Join the webinar on 2 December 2020 from 10am to 12pm (EAT)