Upscaling Ecological Restoration: towards a new legal principle and protocol on ecological restoration in international law

The United Nations Decade of Ecosystem Restoration is an opportunity for States to advance the development of substantive and qualitative international law obligations for conducting restoration activities. This will help countries move beyond the more quantitative target-driven approach that currently focuses international commitments on the percentage of degraded areas that have to be restored. In this paper we argue for two pathways for States to accelerate and pursue international obligations to undertake ecological restoration.