Help communities restore local ecosystems

The issue

Did you know that degraded ecosystems can increase disease, food insecurity and flooding and impact air quality?

Working to change these issues can seem impossible as an individual, but as American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has”.

What can we do about it?

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has put together its Community Organizing Toolkit on Ecosystem Restoration, with real-life examples of community actions, as well as tools and resources to help activists restore their local ecosystems.

It offers step-by-step guidance on understanding the environmental issues your community faces; deciding what actions to take; ways to organise volunteers; and even sources of funding to ensure that any changes have the resource to keep them sustainable.

At Unilever we have seen what communities can achieve when they work with partners to bring about environmental change. One example is the work we have done with smallholder farmers in Côte d’Ivoire to secure land rights. Read more about it here.