Drought puts livelihoods and ecosystems at risk, trapping vulnerable groups in a continuous cycle of poverty. At COP14 held in 2019, Parties to the Convention agreed to “mitigate, adapt to, and manage the effects of drought in order to enhance resilience of vulnerable populations and ecosystems” with a particular focus on ‘prevention’ and ‘preparedness’ via ‘green recovery’.

54% of our global terrestrial land is made up of grasslands, savannahs and rangelands. These ecocystems provide a shared home for wildlife and people, support livelihoods and provide life giving services and benefits. However, they are undervalued and overlooked, subsequently they face some of the fastest and largest rates of land conversion and degradation, resulting in livelihood, habitat and biodiversity losses, carbon emissions, food and freshwater insecurity. This high level breakfast convenes stakeholders to build a coalition and alliances to advocate and take action for resilient and sustainable lands in grasslands, savannahs and rangelands for food, people and nature.

Drought Day at UNCCD COP15 will be an occasion to present and discuss how to transform political commitments to action on drought resilience. Speakers showcase effective policies and projects on the ground from all regions around the world. Organized with the active engagement of partners, the Drought Day delivers a special call for action.

According to IUCN, almost 2 billion USD is required annually for the world to achieve its Land Degradation Neutrality Target, according to IUCN. Even though the Land Degradation Neutrality fund has started to address that financing gap, there is still a significant shortfall in addressing the acute need to restore degraded landscapes that can create resilient livelihoods for those vulnerable to the ill effects of desertification and climate change.

With two thirds of its land degraded, the Sahel is characterized by its significant social and ecological vulnerability to climate change in combination with an exponentially fast growing population. The Sahel is also home to the largest land restoration opportunity in Africa. The restoration of degraded landscapes across this region presents a unique opportunity to rebuild its soil, biodiversity, water quality and resilience while creating new jobs, industries, and fostering local livelihood.

At the UNFCCC COP26, 45 countries representing 70% of global GDP launched the Breakthrough Agenda and committed to work together this decade to accelerate the development and deployment of the clean technologies needed to meet the Paris Agreement goals, ensuring they are affordable and accessible for all.

The Rio Conventions—on Biodiversity, Climate Change and Desertification are intrinsically linked, operating in the same ecosystems and addressing interdependent issues. Land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change are three different faces of the same central challenge: the increasingly dangerous impact of our choices on the health of our natural environment. These three threats cannot be tackled in isolation – they each deserve the highest policy priority and must be addressed together. Radical transformation of land use is necessary to combat the climate, nature and food crises.

Healthy soil is the very foundation of our food system. Over 90 per cent of our food production depends on soil. Soil is also one of the Earth’s most important carbon sinks. Yet, it is estimated that over a third of the Earth’s surface is degraded, limiting the ability of the soil to deliver these vital ecosystem services and functions. To stop this trend, individuals, countries and companies alike must unite in their efforts to bring life back to degraded soils.

Session recording available
Widespread land degradation across Africa is combining with the impacts of the climate crisis to exacerbate poverty, instability, and insecurity.
For that reason, many efforts are ongoing to restore land health and enhance livelihoods. This session will review past restoration efforts, highlight recent lessons, and showcase successes from across the continent, and so help inform future investments and initiatives such as the Great Green Wall.

A sustainable future requires us to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and limit climate change to no more than 1.5°C, while meeting the fundamental human right to healthy food for all. This depends on an equitable and nature-positive transformation of our food systems and requires a paradigm shift from maximising production at the expense of nature, to optimising production with the support of nature.

Land is soil, land is food, land is life. However, to achieve sustainable landscapes and land degradation neutrality, it is imperative that governments embody a rights based landscapes approach to securing a variety of rights, of which land rights are one. This event will offer a broader framing of landscape rights – “a bundle of rights” that include the right to water, livelihood, justice, spatial decision making, and land rights among others.

Session recording available
Healthy soil is the very foundation of our food systems and provides several vital ecosystem services, from carbon sequestration to improving food and nutrition security. Efforts to combat desertification, to move from scarcity to prosperity, will need to consider how to scale soil health, globally.

Ecosystems dominated by grasses, forbs and shrubs constitute our grasslands, savannahs and rangelands. Highly diverse landscapes, they support millions of livelihoods including for farmers and pastoralists. These landscapes cover 54% of global terrestrial land, provide a shared home for people and wildlife, and offer life giving services and benefits like biodiversity, food, freshwater, climate regulation and fibre.

GEF Half-Day at Rio Conventions Pavilion

Around 2 billion people live in fragile conditions presently, which is likely to grow to half of the world’s poor by 2030. More than half the people seriously affected by natural disasters live in fragile states. The emerging consensus is that environmental factors and natural resource scarcity can be a driver of fragility, as ecosystems with limited coping capacities are less resilient to stresses and shocks.

Science Day at UNCCD COP15 brings scientists, policy makers, practitioners, academia, media and representatives of civil society organizations and development organizations under theme ‘Science for Action: Land Restoration and Drought’. Science Day is organized by the UNCCD Science-Policy Interface.

Major policy initiatives and strategies have been launched globally to address crises related to land including food and water insecurity, climate change, land degradation, biodiversity loss, COVID-19 and poverty. Due to weak coordination, it has been difficult to implement these into practical actions on the ground. these initiatives hait has been difficult to implement these on the ground due to weak coordination.

Session recording available
The Resilient Food Systems programme through its integrated and multi-stakeholder frameworks engages smallholder farmer groups, private sector entities, governments and scientific institutions at national and regional levels to advancing an integrated and holistic approach to environmental management for food security. A total of $1billion is invested in 12 countries in sub-Sahara Africa through multi-partnership approach, including 10 million USD of GEF grant resources.

Enhancing soil health and soil organic carbon stocks through climate-sensitive sustainable land management and land restoration is a central leverage for climate change mitigation and adaptation, food security and biodiversity conservation.

Restoration of cocoa landscape is a key response to reverse the dramatic degradation of soil, poor agricultural practices, rural livelihoods, and ecosystem services in the cocoa belt of Côte d’Ivoire. In the past 50 years, the country has lost nearly 90% of its natural forests.