<
https://news.mongabay.com/2025/04/funding-freeze-threatens-global-reforestation-and-restoration-efforts/>
"Global reforestation and forest restoration efforts are facing a serious
setback due to the recent U.S. foreign aid freeze. The sudden halt in funding
has left projects around the world scrambling for alternative resources,
jeopardizing years of progress.
Without consistent funding, ongoing projects face the threat of scaling back or
shutting down entirely, increasing the global risk of biodiversity loss,
climate change, deforestation and environmental degradation. This situation
also undermines the ambitious goal of restoring 1 billion hectares (2.5 billion
acres) of land by 2030, a commitment made by 115 countries, including the U.S.
The restoration commitment requires a fourfold increase in funding from
governments and the private sector by the end of the decade, according to the
United Nations Environment Programme’s latest
State of Finance for Nature –
Restoration Finance Report.
“The [funding] cuts are problematic on multiple levels,” Heather Huntington,
associate professor and executive director of the Penn Development Research
Initiative Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, writes in an email. “First,
there is the direct project impact; projects are delayed or terminated, so
reforestation and restoration are either on hold or (most likely) terminated.”
Huntington has evaluated the impact of United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) projects related to land, environment and climate for more
than 10 years.
Another major impact is on research and learning, as many USAID employment
contracts have been terminated and project evaluations have ceased.
“We are also stopping the evaluations halfway through or even 80% through, and
this means that all of the investment in research design, baseline data
collection, and analytics to date is lost because we cannot complete these
evaluations,” Huntington says. “We’ve lost a lot of knowledge about what works
and does not work for restoration.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
