Contributions of ecological restoration and rehabilitation to the goals of the post-2020 GBF.

Ecological restoration contributes to Goal A of the GBF by increasing natural ecosystem integrity (light and dark green arrows) and to area if it involves restoration of transformed ecosystems towards a natural state (dark green arrows). Ecological restoration also contributes to Goal B by improving NCP in natural ecosystems. Rehabilitation (light orange arrow) contributes to Goal B of the GBF by improving NCP in managed ecosystems and may contribute to enhancing biodiversity, but the degree and type of contributions depend on types and objectives of the rehabilitation action. Most transformed terrestrial ecosystems are managed for agriculture or forestry, and the term “regeneration” is often used in those sectors as an equivalent for rehabilitation. High ecosystem integrity for natural ecosystems is typically defined as having composition, structure, function, and ecological processes close to that of a natural reference ecosystem [11]. This figure is modified from the IPBES Land Degradation and Restoration Assessment [2] to focus on rehabilitation and ecological restoration. This simplified view of restoration does not include many of the important subtleties of the continuum of potential actions [8] nor take into account that some ecosystems are not easily classified as natural versus transformed.