The Task Force on Best Practices, established under the leadership of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), is a collaborative effort of currently 400 members from more than 170 organizations, focused on capacity development and knowledge dissemination activities to help achieve the vision of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (UN Decade).

In 2021, the Task Force on Best Practices, the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature Commission on Ecosystem Management (IUCN CEM) partnered to lead an inclusive effort to draft ten guiding principles for achieving the highest level of recovery possible through restoration projects, in collaboration with the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), EcoHealth Network, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). After the release of the principles and following the same participatory approach, the partnership continued to coordinate the development of Standards of practice to guide ecosystem restoration.  The Standards of practice offer key recommendations on how to apply the ten principles across the entire restoration process, and across the broad array of ecosystems and restoration activities under the UN Decade. The Standards of practice were co-produced with support of 33 authors from 25 organizations, as well as inputs and feedback from over 400 restoration experts from all continents.

Likewise, to facilitate knowledge sharing among practitioners, the Task Force has developed a framework for the dissemination of good practices for ecosystem restoration. Embedded in the Framework for Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring (FERM), it allows for the documentation of good practices from restoration initiatives previously registered in the FERM and includes a common search engine to link and facilitate access to good practices collected from various allied platforms including GoProFor, Panorama Solutions and WOCAT, besides the FERM.

In addition, during 2021-2022 the Task Force also conducted a global capacity needs assessment for restoration and prepared a Capacity, Knowledge and Learning Action Plan for the UN Decade. This action plan proposes eight key capacity- and knowledge-development initiatives to address capacity gaps of different stakeholder groups according to the results of the global capacity needs assessment, a stock-taking of knowledge products and capacity development initiatives, and targeted consultations. The Task Force will undertake efforts to establish partnerships and mobilize resources in order to enable the implementation of the eight initiatives from 2023-2030.

For any questions regarding the Task Force on Best Practices, kindly contact the following FAO focal points: