Restoring degraded land could mean big financial gains for Latin America
▻https://news.mongabay.com/2016/11/restoring-degraded-land-could-mean-big-financial-gains-for-latin-amer
The report finds that the restoration of even 20 million hectares of this degraded land could bring in $23 billion. WRI chose to focus on that number in pursuit of Initiative 20×20, a multinational effort to restore 20 million hectares in Latin America by 2020.
“Degraded, unproductive land is a drag on local farmers and national economies alike,” Walter Vergara, Senior Fellow at WRI and lead author of the report, said in a statement. “But it also represents a tremendous opportunity. WRI’s economic analysis of restoration shows for the first time that if we can bring productivity back to underperforming land, restoration not only pays for itself, but it creates billions of dollars of additional value, brings in environmental co-benefits and represents a major opportunity for carbon storage and therefore to efforts in climate change mitigation.”
Tree biomass loss from deforestation activities is a major source of carbon emissions in Latin America. Nicaragua has some of the highest emissions levels, with an average of 19 million metric tons of CO2 released per year between 2001 and 2014.
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