Something came out of Lima climate change meeting: the ground-breaking Initiative 20 X 20, with its bold target of restoring 20 million hectares of degraded land in Latin America and the Caribbean by 2020, was launched during the Second Global Landscape Forum, held in the sidelines of COP 20 which was held in the Peruvian capital on 6 and 7 December 2014.
Initiative 20 x 20 is a country-driven effort supported by the World Resources Institute (WRI) in association with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) based in Colombia, the Tropical Agriculture Center (CATIE) based in Costa Rica, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the UN Convention to Combat Desertification(UNCCD) reports.*
This new initiative promotes partnerships between countries, the private sector, leading research organizations, and relevant programmes in the Latin America and the Caribbean region with the aim of restoring degraded lands, resulting in increased carbon storage, new reforestation, more productive agriculture, avoided deforestation and land degradation, and improved livelihoods.
Land Degradation Neutrality
In addition to its direct contribution to the global restoration targets set by the Bonn Challenge and the New York Declaration on Forests, Initiative 20 x 20 will also contribute towards achieving the Land Degradation Neutrality target and promoting UNCCD implementation in the region.
For the UNCCD, Initiative 20 x 20 provides new opportunities for synergies with relevant ongoing UNCCD initiatives, such as the Land Degradation Neutrality pilot project that is being implemented in 16 countries around the world (including Chile, Costa Rica, Grenada, and Panama), and with the work that the Liaison – Land, Security and Resilience Programme of the Global Mechanism of the UNCCD is currently undertaking for the promotion of sustainable financing mechanisms for forest and landscape restoration activities at various scales. (*Source:UNCCD).
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