World Resources Institute
Restoring 20 Million Hectares of Degraded Land
Latin America and the Caribbean
Initiative 20×20 aims to bring more than 20 million hectares of degraded lands in Latin America and the Caribbean into restoration by the year 2020.
The Initiative was launched in COP 20 in Lima, Peru, in December 2014 where eight countries and five investment groups announced their ambitions to restore degraded lands and to invest in restoration projects in the region. As of today eleven countries, ten investment partners, three Multilateral Banks and sixteen technical partners have joined the Initiative.
Both the agriculture and forestry sectors are key to commerce, employment and local livelihoods and of the Latin American and Caribbean region. Initiative 20×20 seeks to balance the production needs with the sustainable use of lands through approaches that include silvopasture, agroforestry and low carbon agriculture and reforestation.
Initiative 20×20 partners undertake landscape restoration activities through multiple approaches. Countries play the lead role in restoration, independently setting their restoration targets and opting to include them as a contribution to the goals of Initiative 20×20. This ensures that the paths that each country sets are part of the national priorities, resulting from an internal process.
In Nicaragua for example, coffee production has been severely affected by drought and leaf rust. Agroforestry offers a solution to stabilize the production of coffee, as it combines trees and crops or animals that signify improved ecosystem interactions leading to better resilience. In partnership with NicaFrance, The Moringa Fund has launched the NicaFrance Outgrowers Project, creating a farmers cluster around La Cumplida, the largest independent coffee farm in Nicaragua. La Cumplida covers over 1,800 hectares including agroforestry land, primary forests in conservation, and hardwood timber production land. Overall, the farm will allow sequester 500,000 tons of CO2 and create up to 6,000 jobs.
