What gets measured gets managed. Applying that thinking to the planet is the focus of Swiss-based Restor.
The information Restor provides is helping organizations, including Zurich, to assess the impact of efforts to protect fragile ecosystems. By collecting and sharing detailed information on its platform about individual restoration projects – including forests, wetlands and agriculture – Restor is helping to restore, preserve and maintain global ecosystems and the biodiversity they support.
“At Restor, we want to provide insights that give projects like the Zurich Forest an opportunity to see if they are meeting their goals. Restor also allows them to increase visibility on a global scale and share the positive impact they achieve.”
Zurich has looked to Restor for insights as part of its efforts to restore part of Brazil’s threatened Atlantic Forest. Working with Instituto Terra, a Brazilian non-profit founded by award-winning Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado and his wife Lélia, Zurich is helping bring life back to a 700-hectare portion of the forest – called the Zurich Forest project. As part of its support, Zurich provided a grant to enable Instituto Terra to plant one million seedlings over eight years through to 2027. That’s in addition to more than 2.4 million seedlings that the non-profit has already planted in the reserve.
But it goes beyond trees. A forest brought back to its natural state – fully self-sustaining and biodiverse – is a haven not only for a great number of trees; it also promotes wildlife and helps to protect vital water resources. The Zurich Forest project will restore biodiversity, protect soil and safeguard water sources. It will help regenerate a small but vital piece of the patchwork biome that makes up what was once one of the world’s largest contiguous forest habitats, stretching from Brazil’s eastern-most tip in the north all the way into Paraguay and Argentina in the south.
Restor’s technology helps accelerate efforts to protect and restore natural environments. At its heart, is a data-driven web platform that allows users to select specific regions – down to a resolution of 30 centimeters – and zoom in to assess their restoration and conservation impact and potential.
Owned by the Swiss charitable organization Restor Foundation, Restor was established in 2021. Its founders describe it as a spin-off from a project set up by Thomas Crowther, a British professor of ecology at ETH Zurich, one of Switzerland’s leading technical universities. Originally developed in collaboration with Google, a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., Restor uses the Google Earth Engine to allow users to spot changes, trends and quantify information about what is happening on the Earth’s surface.
Restor uses data from Google Earth Engine, as well as numerous public data and mapping services, to give users vital information on specific localities. Data may include soil pH, vegetation change, rainfall amounts, carbon sequestration potential and even details about which species might be present. This data can help restoration projects have a positive and lasting impact.
Restor is an official partner of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Since its launch in June 2021, more than 520 organizations in 110 countries have joined Restor. It is now home to 120,000 restoration sites, according to the organization.
“If we want to inspire others to take action, we need to be credible in our own engagement,” says Heike Mittmann, Group Sustainability Communications Director at Zurich. “For this, transparency is key,” she says.