NENA region takes bold step towards ecosystem restoration with new regional framework

In a landmark collaboration aimed at revitalizing ecosystem restoration and development performance across the Near East and North Africa (NENA) region, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA), the League of Arab States (LAS), and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) have unveiled the NENA Regional Restoration Pledge and Investment Framework.

This groundbreaking initiative is aligned with the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) and promises to set a new standard for regional cooperation in environmental stewardship that supports sustainable development goals.

Development challenges such as job creation, increasing populations underscore the urgency for the region’s governments to find innovative ways to optimize and diversify sources of economic growth. Compounding these challenges, the NENA region is also grappling with severe land degradation, impacting 45 percent of its agricultural areas and exacerbating water scarcity issues.

Despite a growing global recognition that to surmount these challenges there is an urgent need for partners engaged in development and ecosystem restoration to work more effectively together, the main obstacle is that there are limited incentives for them to do so. 

^{Areas of Global Importance for Terrestrial Biodiversity, Carbon, and Water. Map created by FAO RNE, based on: Jung, M., Arnell, A., de Lamo, X., García-Rangel, S., Lewis, M., Mark, J., … Visconti, P. (2020). Areas of Global Importance for Terrestrial Biodiversity, Carbon, and Water. BioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.16.021444. Accessed through the UN Biodiversity Lab.}

An innovative model to foster collaboration to tackle environmental and development challenges by leveraging the comparative advantages of partners (financial and knowledge).

The NENA Regional Restoration Pledge and Investment Framework aims to address these challenges by pursuing two mutually reinforcing objectives

• promoting effective and sustainable development pathways across the region by aligning national development goals with a holistic ecosystem restoration approach espousing the objectives of the three Rio conventions goals: biodiversity, climate change, and desertification. 
• exploring innovative partnership modalities and opportunities to identify and pilot a portfolio of initiatives that best leverage the comparative advantages of partners resources (financial and knowledge).

Through collaborative dialogues with government entities, private sector partners, civil society networks, international financing institutions, and international donors, the initiative aims to build and curate a supportive partner network, and new ways of doing business that can drive transformational change. 

A phased approach with emphasis on more effectively leveraging partner knowledge and financing instrument to lower and mitigate risk and increase sustainable returns on investment. The NENA Regional Restoration Pledge and Investment Framework initiative is structured in two key phases:

Phase one involves the establishment of a common evidence base that will underpin the NENA Regional Restoration Pledge and Investment Framework. A joint partner mapping report will be developed and validated through a series of consultations across the broad spectrum of partners engaged in development and ecosystem restoration efforts in the region. To ensure that the evidence base is robust and shared the mapping report will leverages existing partner research, and best practices across the partner ecosystems.

The joint mapping report adopts a differentiated approach to help address the heterogeneity of the region. Countries are classified based on a set of risk and resilience parameters including debt distress, conflict risk, and land degradation, demographic projections, food security, forced displacement trends.

Phase two focuses on contextualizing the regional investment pillars underpinning the NENA Regional Restoration Pledge and Investment Framework and identifying country champions to pilot initiatives that can be scaled and replicated across the region. The goal is to create and endorse a transformative regional programme underpinned by innovative knowledge and financial architecture (viz. blended financing) to share and mitigate risk more effectively together in pursuit of sustainable returns on investment. that advance short- and longer-term socio-economic development and restoration goals aligned with the SDGs, and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and the Rio Conventions. 

Towards a new blueprint for collaborative regional action

With the development and validation phases underway, stakeholders are optimistic about the transformative potential of this initiative. By aligning regional efforts with global restoration goals, the NENA Regional Restoration Pledge and Investment Framework is poised to play a crucial role in advancing sustainable development through ecosystem restoration.

As the NENA region embarks on this ambitious journey, the partnership among FAO, UNEP, UNESCWA, LAS and UNCCD heralds a new era of collaborative approaches that crowds in new and existing partners to advance development and environmental priorities in a holistic manner that promotes a more effective use of partners’: knowledge networks and financial instruments. The NENA Regional Restoration Pledge and Investment Framework not only promises to effectively address critical development and ecological challenges but also aims to inspire a model of regional cooperation that can be replicated globally.