In the last few decades, the world has been growing in technologies at an unprecedented pace transforming our lives with massive economic growth that was suddenly jolted at the dawn of the present decade with a global pandemic that licked the world into claiming millions of lives. While the last decades presented many natural and social-ecological calamities from floods, drought, cyclones, forest fires, earthquakes, and diseases with increased frequency, communities and nations have still been slow to take action. Deforestation, conversion, land degradation, and habitat fragmentation have caused species loss in the past, but the pace has been faster and faster with every passing year.
The decade of restoration makes us stand before a question of whether we can restore the systems, whether we can solve the challenges without hindering development, and where humans stand in the picture of ecological restoration. Asia, the continent catering to the two most significant populace and many developing countries battling to find a balance between sustainable growth and ecological resilience, has even more complex questions to answer.
Assessing the current state of the Ecosystems and finding better holistic solutions for development become crucial to ensure development and restoration go hand in hand. The IUCN Red Listing of Ecosystems and Nature-based Solutions are tools to address emerging challenges. However, the intense documents require contextualization and localized translation in policy and practice. To endorse the same in the Asian context, a three-day Workshop was held at KFRI, Kerala, where the global champions of the tools interacted with the regional experts to discuss a plausible route map for constructive solutions. One half-day workshop was also dedicated to the region’s young professionals to share their field understandings.
