Climate Action Resource Hub

Increasing environmental protection and restoration is an environmental restoration response at the policy and advocacy level. The objective is to elevate and integrate environmental protection and restoration as a key pillar of sustainable development policy and practice, and to increase global and national efforts to stop and reverse destruction, degradation and fragmentation of all types of ecosystems.

Principles

Environmental policy and advocacy initiatives should be evidence-based. They should be informed by, and offer, credible research and analysis on international environmental and biodiversity agreements. They should be supported, where possible, by ANGOs’ experiences and firsthand evidence of the impact of environmental degradation on local communities.

Environmental policy and advocacy initiatives should be equitable. They should seek to ensure the protection and restoration of critical ecosystems and natural assets for all communities around the world.

Environmental policy and advocacy initiatives should be inclusive. They should include the voices of people and communities most affected by environmental degradation and climate change. Where possible, they should be led by local communities and indigenous knowledge and practices.

Actions

Key advocacy issues for increasing environmental protection and restoration include:

• Addressing the drivers of deforestation and habitat fragmentation such as palm oil and timber plantations, cattle, mining, road construction and urban sprawl.
• Prioritising nature based solutions, including by incentivising the delivery of environmental benefit through elevating the environment (and climate change adaptation) as a core investment in the development policy.
• Stopping the overfishing of the oceans by prohibiting certain fishing practice to prevent bycatch, and enforcing international agreements.
• Addressing desertification and land degradation.
• Preventing pollution from destroying local ecosystems, including by regulating industrial and mining by-products, improving general waste management and recycling systems, and banning single-use plastics.