Dry grasslands, which cover about 20% of the Earth’s land surface and are home to more than a billion people, are among the ecosystems most vulnerable to land degradation and desertification. They have few fans, no major efforts to save them, and are most prone to transformation to croplands or afforestation. The year 2026 will be the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, which makes COP16 the perfect opportunity to explore the immense potential for biodiversity and carbon sequestration of dry grasslands, the main drivers for their degradation, and their opportunities for restoration.

Dry grasslands are lands of paradoxes.  In those environments, adding trees can reduce the total carbon stock of the landscape, rather than improve it (through a reduction in soil carbon stocks). Raising the stocking rate of livestock can raise the amount of wildlife, rather than be in competition with it. And skilful management is multiple times more effective than capital investment at restoring dry grasslands to full productivity.

In this session, we will review the state of dry grasslands today, discuss some of the most effective ways to restore them and the evolving understanding of dry grassland processes by project funders. One finding, for example,is that youth engagement is essential to put pressure on policymakers to adopt optimised policy frameworks, and to provide the support communities and farmers need to change their management methods.

We will also discuss the ways in which policy, markets and finance influence dry grasslands. Policy can help at multiple scales, including in the design of projects and climate and environmental funding pools and. Innovative marketing can create new markets for dryland products. And a promising source of restoration finance flows from carbon offsets. 

But for carbon markets to work, they need agreed methodologies, and those tailored to dry grassland-specific conditions are limited or absent. That’s in part because of the difficulty of accurately measuring soil organic carbon and soil biomass at scale. But as we will see, that is an area where innovation is progressing rapidly,  with new tools and protocols offering unparalleled degrees of precision from remote sensing imagery.

This side event brings together scientists, youth activists, policymakers from north and south, and innovative dryland businesses to evolve a common understanding of how we can work together to take care of these vast, precious but unforgivably neglected ecosystems.

Objectives:

• Understand the unique challenges facing dry grasslands, their interplay with national policies, and how public participation, notably by youth, can support the effort for their preservation.
• Gain a basic understanding of the limits of set stocking and the advantages of adaptive grazing for the management  of dry grasslands.
• Understand the economic potential of dry grasslands, be it from the exploitation of unusual NTFPs, the monetisation of the recent progress in the rising accuracy of remote sensing derived data points about soil characteristics,  or the improvement in agronomic practices in high population density areas.
•  Insight into National and international policy processes influencing dryland restoration.

Moderator: Christine Magaju, CIFOR-ICRAF

Speakers: 

• Bernard Crabbé, Head of Environment and Mainstreaming, DG INTPA, European Commission
• Johnson Ndokosho, Director of Forestry, Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism of Namibia (tbc)
• Veruschka Dumeni, Head of  communications, outreach and engagement, RAIN
• Patrick Worms, President, IUAF and Science Policy Adviser, CIFOR-ICRAF
• Zvikomborero Tangawamira, Senior Programme Manager, Herding for Health, Peace Parks/Conservation International
• Tor-Gunnar Vågen, Senior Scientist and head of the GeoScience lab, CIFOR-ICRAF
• Josef Garvi, CEO, Sahara Sahel Foods, Niger
• Nasreen Al-Amin, Surge Africa, Nigeria
• Corentin Genin, Focal Point GEF and UNCC, Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Development Cooperation