Management

Sustainable financing for forest and landscape restoration

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The international community has set ambitious goals for forest and landscape restoration (FLR),
including reaching land degradation neutrality by 2030 (Target 15.3 of the Sustainable Development
Goals), restoring 150 million hectares by 2020 in the framework of the Bonn Challenge, and
restoring 350 million hectares by 2030 under the New York Declaration on Forests. The technical
feasibility of meeting these targets has been proved. However, implementation faces a number
of barriers. In addition to unclear tenure rights, lack of implementation capacity and continued
incentives for unsustainable land uses, one of the chief barriers is insufficient awareness of
financing opportunities and investors’ lack of understanding of FLR.
Between USD 36 billion and USD 49 billion are required every year to achieve agreed FLR
targets, a limited amount in comparison to climate finance (USD 350 billion to USD 640 billion
annually). Where can this money be found? There are many sources for raising these funds, among
them: development cooperation resources, climate finance, non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), State budgets, environmental funds, crowdfunding and the private sector. With
governments facing more and more funding shortages and development cooperation having
limited growth margins, long-term financing solutions may increasingly rely on the private sector
and on instruments enabling self-sustained financing such as environmental funds.
Private-sector investors – businesses and individuals – are the key to long-term FLR finance,
whether as social investors in the framework of corporate social responsibility or as impact
investors looking for a mix of social and financial returns. More than ten private equity impact
funds (already operational or in design) seek to invest in landscape restoration projects. They
are small relative to the needed budget (generally limited to USD 100 million), but even so it is a
challenge to find bankable projects. This challenge is what makes traditional investors (pension
funds, commercial banks) reluctant to invest in FLR even though they have available capital and
interested potential clients.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Sustainable financing for forest and landscape restoration

Call Number

-

Publisher

USA : ., 2015

Collation

1-131

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

978-92-5-108992-7

Classification

NONE

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

1st Edition

Subject(s)

Finance

Specific Detail Info

-

Statement of Responsibility

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Other version/related

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