On Earth Day, April 22, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations launched a significant new initiative, Accelerating Innovative Monitoring for Nature Restoration (AIM4NatuRe), with £7 million (approximately USD 9.38 million) in support from the United Kingdom. This initiative aims to strengthen how countries around the world monitor and report on their ecosystem restoration efforts.
Building on the success of FAO’s AIM4Forests programme, AIM4NatuRe will leverage advanced technology and data solutions to support restoration work across forests, wetlands, grasslands, marine ecosystems, and degraded agricultural lands.
FAO Director-General QU Dongyu highlighted that the project is designed to turn restoration pledges into real, lasting impact. With access to expert support and modern monitoring tools, participating countries will be better prepared to contribute to Target 2 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which calls for the restoration of at least 30 percent of degraded ecosystems by 2030.
UK Minister for Climate Kerry McCarthy emphasized the initiative’s potential to both protect nature and empower communities, while also creating a unified global dataset to ensure progress is transparent and accountable.
The initiative responds to a pressing challenge: many countries lack the technical capacity to track and report ecosystem restoration effectively. A recent survey by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) found that 80 percent of countries struggle to collect the necessary data.
AIM4NatuRe will tackle this issue by offering standardized reporting systems, training, and technical solutions such as the Framework for Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring (FERM), helping nations streamline data collection and analysis.
With nearly one billion hectares of land already pledged for restoration globally, AIM4NatuRe could play a key role in addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation, while also supporting food security and livelihoods.
Significantly, AIM4NatuRe will also support Indigenous Peoples in monitoring restoration in a way that respects and centers the balance of ecosystems. Pilot projects are set to begin in Brazil and Peru in collaboration with FAO's Indigenous Peoples Unit to support traditional knowledge and biocentric restoration practices.
Additionally, FAO introduced a new publication to support countries in consistently reporting and monitoring freshwater restoration under Target 2. As AIM4NatuRe scales up, it will continue to emphasize data interoperability and learning accessibility, building on the success of FAO’s online forest monitoring curriculum, which has already engaged over 15,000 learners worldwide.
