As seen on E&E ClimateWire

Elizabeth Harball and Niina Heikkinen, E&E reporters 

Six Latin American nations, with support from nongovernmental organizations, yesterday formally pledged to restore about 16 million hectares (more than 39 million acres) of degraded or deforested land by 2020.

Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador and Costa Rica together announced written and verbal land restoration commitments at an event this weekend in Lima, Peru, at the Global Landscapes Forum, happening in tandem with the U.N. climate negotiations. The effort, dubbed the 20×20 Initiative, ultimately aims to restore 20 million hectares of land by the end of this decade.

“In the last 11 years, 36 million hectares of pristine forests and grasslands were converted into agriculture. This is not sustainable,” said Walter Vergara, a climate specialist with the nonprofit World Resources Institute who helped coordinate the initiative.

“The way to address the global demand for food and at the same time maintain the natural capital that is essential to the future well-being of our inhabitants in the region and globally, land restoration is essential — it’s a must,” Vergara said.

Unlike for major economies such as the United States and China, land-use change accounts for a significant percentage of total greenhouse gas emissions for many Latin American and Caribbean nations. For example, forest clearing or other forms of land degradation cause more than 31 percent of Guatemala’s emissions, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

At the same time, food production is key to many Latin American and Caribbean economies — in Ecuador, for example, World Bank data show that agriculture accounts for 28 percent of total employment. Land restoration efforts attempt to balance the need for increased food production against the need to mitigate climate change.

Restoration efforts will focus on increasing existing farmland’s productivity through improved soil health, as well as educating farmers on ways to avoid deforestation, said Elcio Guimaraes, the regional director for Latin America for the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT).

Farmers in the region tend to farm land until the soil loses its productivity, then move on to clearcut a new section of forest. While individual plots of land may not be more than a hectare, there are hundreds of thousands of farmers using this method of cultivation, said Guimaraes, who also helped to coordinate the initiative.

One conservation strategy could be to encourage farmers to plant native fruit trees within the forest instead of cutting it down, “so we teach them to manage trees in a way to make money,” Guimaraes said.

Colombia’s minister of environment, Gabriel Vallejo, also stressed the importance of bringing back degraded lands to Latin American economies, saying in a statement, “Land restoration in the region is an essential element to promote equity, poverty reduction, alternatives for development in poor rural areas as well as a mechanism for a low carbon, more resilient future.”
‘Substantially higher’ payments needed to meet restoration goal.

So far, private investors have a total of $365 million committed to support the restoration initiative. The majority of the funders have an environmental bent. London-based Permian Global, for example, which committed $100 million to the initiative, is an investment firm devoted entirely to forest carbon projects.

Vergara said there is not yet an estimate on the total cost to restore the full 20 million hectares under the initiative, but that it will likely be “substantially higher” than the initial $365 million. While donations and grants could play a role in the effort’s future, Vergara said, the initiative will try to get the bulk of its future funding from similar sources.

“20×20 emphasizes the role of private-sector investors,” Vergara said, “and not any type of investors: These are impact investors; these are funds that include in their philosophy … environmental issues and social issues.”

In the past, some have criticized similar international environmental pledges for lacking accountability. Before the flurry of pledges announced at the U.N. climate change summit in New York this September, for example, environmental groups and academics wrote in a letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stating their worries about “the apparent lack of a clear framework for the implementation of commitments after the summit” (ClimateWire, Sept. 18).

The 20×20 initiative is not legally binding, Vergara confirmed, calling it instead “an expression of ambition by countries.”

But Vergara added that “follow-up is critical,” explaining that “WRI and others are organizing a technical support process to help these countries and these partners to follow up on this vision,” an effort that will include monitoring technology like remote sensing, economic analysis and capacity training, he said.

“I don’t see a need for a binding agreement,” said Guimaraes. In his opinion, countries would want to take part because the land restoration would also help them achieve existing development goals in an environmentally sustainable way.

The next step will be a meeting early next year with a few key countries and investors to figure out which projects should be prioritized for funding, Guimaraes said.
“We know the needs are long-term, it will require a lot of dialogue and investment, but it’s doable,” he said.