Over three billion people around the world suffer from the consequences of land degradation: less water, lower crop yields, declining rural incomes, and erosion. Governments have committed to restore millions of hectares of farms, forests, and pasture through the global Bonn Challenge and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Their objective is to bring prosperity to struggling rural economies and kickstart a vibrant “restoration economy” of thriving businesses and community groups. To reach their ambitious national goals, governments are designing policies that help people to restore land and keep it healthy, but these programs sometimes run into roadblocks when officials are planning, financing, and implementing them. Government leaders need technical assistance to better design new policies and adapt existing ones to maximize their impact and minimize costs.
To close that gap, WRI designed the Restoration Policy Accelerator, a collaborative network that helps government leaders solve these key problems and push each other toward success. By building south-south networks of mutual support and promoting smart policies, the Policy Accelerator hopes to help governments boost restoration implementation on the ground and continue to lead in the global movement to restore landscapes.
The program walks governments leaders through a seven-step process of effective policy reform to: