A U.N. report finds that 252 million hectares (ha) (623 million acres) across 149 countries are being restored, creating more than 1 million green jobs—the largest documented global restoration effort to date.

To reach 2030 commitments, action must rapidly increase, with a particular focus on freshwater, marine and coastal ecosystems, and annual restoration finance must more than quadruple. This investment could generate an estimated 32 million new jobs worldwide by 2030.

The report, "Nature's comeback—scaling ecosystem restoration for people and planet", is published midway through the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030). It provides the first comprehensive global assessment of progress against commitments to restore around 1 billion hectares (2.47 billion acres) and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework target to ensure that by 2030, at least 30% of degraded terrestrial, freshwater, marine and coastal ecosystems are under effective restoration.

Co-published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the report was launched at a high-level event during the U.N. Biodiversity Conference (COP17). The event recognized five outstanding initiatives in China, Colombia, Ethiopia, Italy and the United States as U.N. World Restoration Flagships—highlighting successful restoration drives around the world.

"Today, we are witnessing the makings of one of the largest movements for nature in recorded history," said Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP. "Yet, at the halfway point of the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, we are still not restoring nature at the scale or speed required. By 2030, we must turn inspiring initiatives into systemwide action—shifting to restoration economies that protect what remains and restore what has been degraded."

The global movement to restore nature extends beyond national programs to cities, schools, businesses and community initiatives. Since the start of the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, its partnership network has grown to more than 300 organizations across all regions...

Planetary defense is a growing concern among the scientific community, as efforts have been made to design and implement missions meant to deflect incoming threats to the Earth well in advance. In 2022, NASA intentionally collided the Double Asteroid Redirection test (DART) planetary defense spacecraft into the smaller asteroid of the binary asteroid, Didymos and Dimorphos, with the latter being the smaller one. While the goal was to ascertain if deflecting an asteroid is feasible, how did this influence the geological characteristics of Dimorphos, and what can it teach us about planetary defense missions?

This is the task of a brave robotic explorer known as Hera, which is a spacecraft mission led by the European Space Agency (ESA) in cooperation with NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Hera recently sent back its first image of Didymos and Dimorphos, which orbit each other as they orbit the Sun, with the image revealing the two asteroids separated, as opposed to seeing a single dot. This comes after Hera was launched in October 2024 and is now about 1,280 kilometers (795 miles) from the well-known binary asteroid, the latter of which is about 197 million kilometers (122 million miles) from Earth. While the larger Didymos is estimated to be 780 meters (2,559 feet) in diameter, the much smaller Dimorphos is estimated to be about 151 meters (495 feet) across.

“For the very first time we are seeing through Hera’s own eyes the very double asteroid system that the mission was designed and built for,” said Ian Carnelli, who is the ESA Head of the Systems Department and the Hera mission manager. “Our views will much grow sharper as Hera comes closer. We will unveil the first detailed images of Dimorphos – the first object in the Solar System to have had its orbit measurably shifted by human action – on 25 November [2026].”

As noted, the goal of the Hera mission will be to conduct follow-up observations and data collection for NASA’s DART planetary defense mission. For this mission, the DART spacecraft intentionally impacted Dimorphos with the goal of ascertaining whether impacting an object could deflect it away from impacting Earth. The intentional impact occurred in September 2022 at 6.1 km/s (3.8 mi/s), resulting in not only slowing Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos by 32 to 33 minutes, with the initial goal being at least 73 seconds. Thus, the mission was deemed a resounding success, and the researchers even observed an ejecta plume from the surface of Dimorphos as far as 10,000 kilometers (6,214 miles) into space.

Along with conducting observational analyses of the post-collision Dimorphos surface, Hera will also deploy two shoebox-sixed CubeSats named Milani and Juventas since Hera can’t fly that close to the surface. While Milani’s task is to perform a close-up mineralogical analysis of the DART impact site, Juventas will be tasked with using ground-penetrating radar to peer about 100 meters (328 feet) beneath Dimorphos’ surface to ascertain whether its interior is solid rock or a loose rubble pile which has been proposed by researchers...