Hosted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety (BMUKN), the Bonn Challenge is a global goal to bring 350 million hectares of degraded and deforested landscapes into restoration by 2030. Started in 2011, the challenge responds to the urgent issue of land degradation affecting over 3 billion people and over 30 per cent of Earth’s arable land by bringing together countries, organizations and private entities to pledge and achieve ambitious restoration targets.
In 2015, India pledged 13 million hectares to the 2020 challenge goal, with an additional 8 million hectares by 2030. At the 14th Conference of the Parties (COP14) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), held in 2019, India enhanced their goal, pledging a record breaking 26 million hectares, the largest ever pledge.
Last week, on World Day to Combat Drought and Desertification, Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Shri Bhupender Yadav highlighted India’s considerable progress towards this goal, announcing that the nation has already brought 21.76 million hectares of land under restoration efforts on track to meet and succeed their pledge.
In conjunction with this announcement, India’s Second Progress Report on the Bonn Challenge was released marking an important milestone. Through a collaborative process involving data collection from 36 States and Union Territories, and Department of Land Resources (DoLR), the report compiles restoration efforts undertaken across diverse landscapes and FLR intervention types. It reaffirms the importance of the Bonn Challenge and its pledges in paving the way for a sustainable future, connecting India’s achievements to the upcoming UNCCD COP17 and the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP) by highlighting the ecological and socio-economic benefits of restoration efforts across India. The report also reflects the scale and diversity of India’s restoration efforts, helping to strengthen a more systematic national approach to monitoring restoration progress to support its 2030 Bonn Challenge commitment.
