Gishwati – Mukura forest
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) will this Wednesday hold a series of a global digital events to celebrate the first major milestone of the Bonn Challenge and the enormous impact of the forest landscape restoration (FLR) movement.
The 5 live discussions to be streamed live on YouTube on September 2 will featuring speakers like Dr. Bruno Oberle, Director General of IUCN, Jochen Flasbarth, State Secretary, Germany Federal Ministry of the Environment; Karin Kemper the Global Director, Environment, Natural Resources and Blue Economy Global Practice at the World Bank; to Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, CEO, Global Environment Facility.
Rwanda will not be left out as the country is expected to share its success story in tree planting, reforestation and give direction to its implementation of the new nature based standards (NbS).
Former Miss Popularity Rwanda 2017; Honorine Uwase Hirwa; aka “miss Gisabo Honorine” who was also titled Miss Earth Rwanda 2017, is expected to attend and speak at the youth event “Youth action on restoration and climate”
Miss Hirwa is now partnering with IUCN as a Forest and landscape Restoration Ambassador in Rwanda to run and coordinate national campaigns whose primarily aim is to raise awareness on sustainable management of our forests to private sectors, public institutions and especially to the youth.
In a session dubbed “The Bonn Challenge flashback” world environment expert will also look back at what has been done since the global commitment to the Challenge.
The challenge, signed in Bonn Germany, is a global goal to bring 150 million hectares of degraded and deforested landscapes into restoration by 2020 and 350 million hectares by 2030.
Since its launch in 2011, the Challenge has surpassed the 150-million-hectare milestone for pledges in 2017 of the 210.12million hectares pledged.
Currently, 74 countries have made pledges to restoring 210 million hectares of degraded and deforested lands across Africa, Asia and Pacific, Latin America, Europe and North America.
In Africa, South Sudan made the biggest commitment with 14.6million hectares, followed by Ethiopia with 15million, 12million for Cameroon, DR Congo 8million,
And Tanzania with 5.2million committed.
Rwanda, Zimbabwe Ghana, Burundi, the Republic of Congo Senegal made a 2million hectares commitment each.
Being one of the leading countries in implementing the Bonn Challenge Rwanda’s IUCN country office will be represented by Charles Karangwa who will shed more light on what is the Rwandan basket.
“Forest landscape restoration is a long term process to gain ecological functionality of the landscape. Through collective effort, using Rwandan- home grown solutions, it is indeed possible to fully restore our forests,” Karangwa said in a statement on IUCN website.
