Rethinking Urban Landscapes: Equity, Restoration, and Resilience in Arid Regions

Examples of planning for restoration in Pretoria, South Africa, and Dakar, Senegal, show the power of urban action for land restoration that delivers economic and social benefits in addition to environmental gains. During this event, speakers highlighted the role of city authorities in delivering commitments under the UN climate, biodiversity, and desertification conventions (“the Rio Conventions”) and called for viewing local authorities as rightful partners with national governments.

Stefania Romano, UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE)/Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) Forests, introduced the event and the keynote speakers.

Édouard Hervé Moby Mpah, Mayor of Douala IV, Cameroon, presented efforts in his city to use nature-based solutions, such as restoring mangrove ecosystems and creating green spaces as part of the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Generation Restoration initiative (2023-25). He noted that cities have a key role to play in pioneering the adoption of sustainable practices and innovative solutions. He highlighted the importance of governance structures that enable participation of all stakeholders, the value of international collaboration, and the need to mobilize innovative and sustainable financing to support cities’ action plans.

Natalia Alekseeva, Coordinator, UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, UNEP, noted that UNEP tends to be perceived as advocating exclusively for nature. She applauded the presentation on Douala’s efforts to restore urban mangrove ecosystems as the perfect example of a people-centred approach, which she said has been and is being discussed at UNCCD COP 16. She explained that restoring the urban landscape is really investing in social assets for the local community. Alekseeva added that one of the challenges is defining cross-cutting urban actions that can deliver on goals of three Rio Conventions.

Liliana Annovazzi-Jakab, Chief, ECE/FAO Joint Forestry and Timber Section, UNECE, outlined several flagship initiatives. She stressed the importance of integrating urban forestry plans into broader urban planning and budgeting processes. She mentioned, as an example, the Trees in Dry Cities Coalition, established at UNFCCC COP 28 in 2023 in collaboration with the World Green Economic Organisation (WGEO). The Coalition, she explained, is creating a bankable pipeline of funding concepts for urban trees and nature in dry cities.

Melissa De Kock, UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC), moderated the panel discussion on “Delivering on the Rio Conventions: Leveraging Urban Restoration.”

Francesco Corvaro, Special Envoy for Climate Change, Italy, explained how rebuilding from a major earthquake in the Apennine region had provided the opportunity to introduce new technologies and innovations that help with climate adaptation and urban greening. He highlighted the value of working with local mayors and local communities at every stage, noting achievements, for example, in: introducing reflective pavements to reduce heat absorption; planting specific trees that are useful for the area; and creating an attractive environment for young people to return to the region and work remotely.

Regina Orvananos, UN-Habitat, stressed the importance of proper urban planning that draws on spatial and community-based mapping to create green spaces that conserve biodiversity and improve basic services, such as planting trees for sandstorm prevention and recycling grey water for the irrigation of public spaces.

Abdoul Aziz Niame, Regional Coordinator for the Arabian Peninsula Regional Program, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), advocated for planting indigenous rather than exotic plants in urban landscapes, noting the limitations of water availability and pollution in many contexts. He found hope in new water technologies, such as fog harvesting, to augment water availability for urban planting.

Hemanshu Kafle, Executive Secretary, International Forestry Students’ Association, highlighted that more than 85% of the world’s 1.2 billion young people live in societies that depend directly on land and natural resources. He mentioned three hurdles for his Association’s 16,000 members, namely: gaining financing for activities; accessing the relevant expertise to carry out restoration; and ensuring that policy provides the relevant enabling conditions for youth to play a role. He urged all present to support, amplify, and invest in young people’s voices and actions.

Yunus Arikan, Head, Global Policy and Advocacy, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, emphasized that desertification issues affect not only African countries but the Global North as well, noting, for example, the 2024 drought emergency in Catalonia, Spain. He called for: multi-level action, dialogue, and collaboration between central governments and city authorities; and the desertification and climate policy communities to be visible in the new climate plan to be adopted at UNFCCC COP30 in Belém, Brazil, in 2025.

Graham Young, President, International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) Africa, presented a model for redeveloping a derelict soccer stadium in Pretoria, South Africa, into a city park. He showed how the site could be developed to achieve net zero runoff, whereby grey water from a nearby shopping center and harvested rainwater can be stored in an underground tank for use, while city authorities could gain revenue from renting the common areas, retail outlets, and advertising boards.

Responding to a participant who urged more financing for tree planting, Alekseeva anticipated that the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) will bring in new types of financing. She also mentioned that the current shift from unconditional grants toward mixed financing creates a promising context for urban restoration projects to attract private sector interest. Arikan advocated for non-market approaches to sustainable development and explained this would mean joint planning with ministries for public housing, infrastructure, and urban development, which generally have access to more funds than ministries of environment.

Deborah Goffner, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), presented a planning project for the Dakar Greenbelt and a blue-green infrastructure network in the context of rapid urban growth and the need to mitigate urban sprawl. Following data collection and the establishment of a governance process, the two groups, she said, had traveled around the sites together with more than 50 people to engage in a co-learning process. Joint planning, she said, continues via weekly Zoom meetings.

Organizers: UNEP and UNECE
Contact: restorationdecade@un.org  
Website: https://www.decadeonrestoration.org