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Restoring Landscapes in South Africa (ReLISA): Nature-based solutions for climate, biodiversity and people

The UNEP-led ReLISA consortium was formed in response to a 2020 IKI Country Call for South Africa on Land Use and Climate Change Mitigation – Taking Action.The overall aim of the ReLISA project is to make the economic case for landscape-level restoration and create the conditions for a just transition of South Africa’s land-use sector, to adapt to climate change and address biodiversity loss while improving livelihoods of rural communities and farmers. This will be achieved through biophysical/economic assessments as inputs to planning restoration activities, the leveraging private sector investment through pre-feasibility studies and project development, on-the-ground implementation at landscape level for thicket, grassland and savanna biomes, and dissemination and communication. Making the economic case for ecosystem restoration aligns with Goal B of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework: “Biodiversity is sustainably used and managed and nature’s contributions to people, including ecosystem functions and services, are valued, maintained and enhanced, with those currently in decline being restored, supporting the achievement of sustainable development for the benefit of present and future generations by 2050”. Proposed project outcomes include: (1) restoration incentives and policies aligned with political priorities, economic costs/benefits and desired distributional impact; (2) enhancement of the Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system for South Africa’s land-use sector; (3) increased donor and private sector funding for restoration activities; (4) increased resilience against climate change and improved livelihoods through securing hydrological services to downstream/urban populations; and (5) restoration models for thicket, grassland and savanna applied. The project will contribute to UNEP’s work on nature action. Specifically, it contributes to the economic and social analysis to develop sustainable pathways for halting and reversing the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem integrity (PoW Outcome 2A) and sustainable management of nature being adopted and implemented in development frameworks (PoW Outcome 2B). The project is part of the “Conservation, Restoration and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity” programme coordination project (PCP) and it contributes specifically to the PCP Programme Outcome 1: Enhanced conservation, restoration, and sustainable use of natural and productive terrestrial, marine, coastal and freshwater ecosystems, as well as Programme Outcome 2: Mobilised finance and investment for conservation, restoration, and sustainable use, including for IPLCs. The analytical grounding for the project is based on UNEP’s comparative advantage on the economics of nature, valuation of ecosystem services and techniques for prioritization of ecosystem restoration interventions based on cost-benefit analysis, following earlier UNEP-led work on natural capital accounting that has been appreciated by the Government of South Africa (GoSA) and was instrumental in the successful pre-selection of the project by BMUV. The sustainability of the project is ensured through its strong focus on developing a diverse array of viable restoration business models appropriate for the different tenure and land ownership circumstances in degraded landscapes of the three biomes and making restoration at scale investible for private sector impact investors. The models can be replicated and upscaled during and after the project lifetime, and this will be supported through targeted dissemination, as well as implementation that demonstrates the business case for restoration. Strengthening the capacities of key stakeholders and restoration champions (e.g., farmers implementing restoration on their land), complementing private finance through other funding options (e.g., a Green Climate Fund concept note) and establishing structures for innovative mechanisms such as water funds are further means to ensure the sustainability of ReLISA outputs and outcomes.