Funding of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Free Spirit is proud to join leading environmental organizations as an official partner in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a rallying call for the protection and revival of ecosystems, vital to our lives and well-being, all around the world. As an actor and official partner, Free Spirit will play an active role in managing and shaping the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Building on our extensive experience to protect and restore nature, our long-term commitment will entail actively funding and leading efforts to realize ecosystem restoration globally, and contributing new science and research to help scale up these efforts effectively. Free Spirit is actively works to mobilize the funding of the UN Decade on ecosystem restoration.

A major focus of the UN Decade will be to unlock and mobilise finance in the public and private sectors to upscale restoration.  One trillion US dollars is a conservative estimate of the amount of finance required to assist in addressing current environmental challenges through ecosystem restoration. Unlocking and mobilising this amount of finance will be achieved through many routes. Changes in government subsidy regimes, taxation systems, national budgets and local government budgets will be needed. Finance will need to be mobilised from international financial institutions, multi-lateral development banks, national development banks, commercial banks and micro-finance institutions. Other significant flows of funding will need to arise from impact investments, philanthropic capital, local community investments, landowner commitments and contributions from individuals.

The UN Decade’s digital hub will have a specific section dedicated to the provision of knowledge on how to finance ecosystem restoration and the building of capacity of stakeholders to raise such finance. A special Task Force will be established to focus solely on this theme.