Key success factors
There were several reasons for the success of the restoration initiative.
• Implementation had the active participation of the local community; i.e., it was community- led restoration.
• Restoration produced short- and long-term economic and environmental benefits.
• It systematically included women, girls and youth in restoration activities.
• The former village leader had the leadership capacity to mobilize the local community.

‘Over the past three decades hundreds of thousands of farmers in Burkina Faso and Niger, on the fringes of the Sahara Desert, have transformed large swathes of the region’s arid landscape into productive agricultural land, improving food security for about three million people. Once-denuded landscapes are now home to abundant trees, crops, and livestock.'

The West African Sahel is very vulnerable to the effects of climate change, due to land degradation, dependence on rainfed farming, political instability, poor governance, food insecurity, terrorism, poor infrastructure, and limited technical capacity. This has particular impacts on the agricultural sector (Sissoko et al. 2011; Zougmoré et al. 2016).

Restoration is more complex than just planting trees. It requires that farmers, rural communities, businesses, and government agencies—all with different interests—unite behind a shared vision. Establishing common goals and measuring progress facilitates deeper collaboration among diverse actors.

Ecosystems and Biodiversity Facts and Figures # The IPBES Report (5) stated that “around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history”.

The authors briefly review how microbial biotechnology can contribute to improve activities aiming to restore degraded drylands and to combat their desertification, which are an integral part of the Sustainable Development Goal 15 of the 2030 Agenda. Microbial biotechnology offers notable promise to improve restoration actions based on the use of biocrust‐forming engineered cyanobacteria, which play key roles in maintaining ecosystem structure and functioning in drylands worldwide.

The Great Green Wall is one of the main vehicles for delivering the Sustainable Development Goals and the Rio conventions in the Sahel. Biodiversity is the foundation of the Great Green Wall in many ways, determining soil productivity and water cycles and providing the foundation for risk management and resilient ecosystems. The Great Green Wall can make a major contribution to achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Since the mid-1980s, the positive impacts of these simple, cost-efficient water harvesting techniques become clear, following their increasingly widespread adoption. Their use has allowed smallholders to reverse land degradation, improve soil fertility, sustainably increase crop production, achieve food security, and create more productive, diverse and resilient farming systems. At the same time, groundwater is recharged, improving access to drinking water for the entire year, and creating opportunities for irrigated vegetable gardening around wells.

UNDP's "Peoples' Climate Vote" reflects over half the world's population after results processed by the University of Oxford. Sixty-four percent of people believe climate change is a global emergency, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic

Valuable lessons can be learned from smallholder farmers who have successfully protected and regenerated tree cover across agricultural landscapes in Senegal, with minimal reliance on tree nurseries, seedling distribution or tree planting. In the process, they have restored soil fertility to sustainably increase agricultural production.

The multiple benefits of restoration, from local to global scales, are reflected in the array of global and regional goals for restoration.

The latest IPCC report highlights that a change in diets for richer nations, and smarter land use, could ensure food security and mitigation of potential climate impacts.

Land surface processes — agriculture, forestry and other land use — account for 28% of anthropogenic emissions. However, natural land processes absorb about a third of the emissions from fossil fuel burning and energy production.