Today, Europe faces a choice. Do we continue to let climate change and biodiversity decline continue unchecked, or do we employ the most immediate and cost-effective solutions to counter these increasingly harmful trends? In reality, it’s not much of a choice.
Restoration of nature, based on Rewilding Principles, is one of the best ways of tackling our current climate and biodiversity emergencies. Rewilding ecosystems across Europe not only benefits wild nature, but it also enhances the wide range of benefits that such nature gives all Europeans – from clean air and water, carbon sequestration and fertile soil, right through to flood protection, climate change resilience and enhanced health and wellbeing.
Yet, only 2% of all climate-related funding globally is put into the recovery of nature, while an estimated 37 of global emissions can be mitigated through such measures.
In its new Biodiversity Strategy 2030, the European Commission has proposed legally binding targets on ‘restoration’ for EU member states, that really drives the landscape-scale restoration and ensures the connectivity of ecosystems vital for biodiversity and climate.
Such legislation is critical, as it would increase the amount of EU territory in good ecological condition, if it includes hard, legally binding restoration targets expressed in square kilometres, and deliver increased levels of financial investment. Existing policies that undermine nature restoration – such as EU incentives to grow bioenergy crops or harvest forest biomass for energy, as well as the Common Agricultural Policy – also need to be revised.
