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Losing the ground beneath our feet

What needs to be done during the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

By United Nations Development Programme

May 16^th, 2022

Rich and healthy soils are the basis of all life on Earth.

Yet up to 40 percent of the planet’s land is degraded, affecting half the world’s population.

Up to 40 percent of the planet’s land is degraded, affecting half the world’s population. Photo: Shutterstock

About 1 billion people in developing countries live in extreme poverty. Two thirds are in rural areas, and their land is their life—they rely on it for shelter, food and income. They also stand to suffer disproportionately from land degradation in the coming decades, unless large-scale restoration takes place.

These are in areas with the highest rates of poverty, hunger, inequality and pollution.

Especially at risk are people living in drylands – covering 45 percent of the Earth’s surface – which are prone to desertification and the devastating impacts of climate-related shocks such as disease, drought, flooding and wildfire.

Around 12 million hectares of land are lost each year to degradation. By 2050, it is estimated that less than 10 percent of the Earth’s land surface will remain free of direct human impact.

All the world’s regions are experiencing land degradation, which takes many forms – from soil degradation to forest loss, loss of grasslands and wetlands.

In the European Union, 60-70 percent of soils are degraded as a direct result of unsustainable management and have lost significant capacity to provide ecological functions for various forms of life.

Fifty percent of agricultural land in Latin America will be degraded by 2050.

Two thirds of land in Africa is already degraded, affecting 65 percent of the continent.

At this pace, 135 million people, including 60 million from sub-Saharan Africa, may be displaced by 2045.

Climate change and desertification are linked and feed off each other – together they create less healthy ecosystems and biodiversity, while at the same time reducing crop and livestock productivity and soil’s ability to store carbon.

This fatal ‘partnership’ has led to the demise of many past civilizations.

The stakes

Transformation is going to require bold steps.

Every year the world is losing US$44 trillion of its agricultural GDP due to land degradation.

If hunger and food insecurity are to be overcome by 2050, agricultural productivity will have to increase by 100 percent in developing countries and 60 percent in developed countries.

But sustainable land management and restoration are key to unlocking and even generating up to $1.4 trillion in economic benefits every year. Each dollar invested in restoration can return up to $30 in economic benefits.

What UNDP is doing

UNDP and its partners are working towards a land degradation-neutral world—which means land, both in amount and quality of the soil, remains stable enough or increases to support ecosystem functions and improve food security.

What makes this different from previous approaches is that it combines methods which preserve and improve the quality of land we have at the same time as reversing past destruction.

The objective is to balance anticipated losses in land resources with measures that produce alternative gains through approaches such as sustainable land management and land restoration.

Land health is an important facet of the Sustainable Development Goals, including those related to poverty, food security, water and climate change, and UNDP classes land restoration as an “SDG Accelerator”.

“Land degradation and desertification impoverish countries, communities and people. Restoring degraded lands is an opportunity to act on both an ecological sustainable development path and address climate change, biodiversity loss and improve livelihoods and economies.”

– Haoliang Xu, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director of UNDP’s Bureau for Policy and Programme Support

Undoing the damage

UNDP’s partnership with the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) works with farmers, foresters and other land users to undo the damage of land degradation and give communities the tools to rebuild soil health and improve food security.

We are working in countries such as India to support farmers as they adopt sustainable agro-forestry by increasing the time between cropping cycles, helping to restore soil fertility and regenerate plant cover.

Costa Rica has been an inspiring example of how quickly success can occur. In a few years it has gone from having 21 percent forest cover to nearly 60 percent, for which it received $54 million from the Green Climate Fund in 2020 and in 2021 won the inaugural Earthshot Prize. UNDP continues to support the rehabilitation of degraded forests to facilitate connectivity between forests and protected areas.

Mongolia’s vast rangelands and grasslands require careful water management, and UNDP is promoting new ways of capturing snow melt and rainwater for livestock during the dry season. We have helped to finance tree nurseries and to protect existing springs. We also work with cashmere farmers to enable them to crack the lucrative international luxury market, while restoring and protecting their lands and livestock.

In Burkina Faso, a new initiative will support communities to adopt ecosystem-based adaptation practices such as reforestation, planting grass strips between fields to promote water conservation, ridging, contouring or bank terracing to rehabilitate riverbanks and reduce soil erosion in five priority sub-catchments of the Nakanbé Basin.

The rich farmlands of northern Kazakhstan have been degraded by chemical fertilizers as a result of their reliance on grain monoculture. UNDP is working with farmers in the Kostanay region to swap high-chemical inputs farming practices for more agroecological and regenerative agriculture that includes the use of organic compost. They have seen significant improvements in soil health, and crop yields have risen by 20 percent while new organic markets have opened up.

Re-directing ‘perverse’ incentives

Every year, the world spends $700 billion less than what is needed to reverse biodiversity loss. The new Global Land Outlook calls for perverse incentives to be redirected towards restoration. UNDP’s Biodiversity Finance Initiative works with 41 countries to support national biodiversity finance plans and redirect damaging public funds, such as the vast majority of agricultural subsidies.

UNDP is a founding partner of the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, which launched in June 2021 following an anchor investment from the GEF. It comprises 34 members, spanning private financial institutions and corporations, working on a reporting framework to act on nature-related risks.

And the new Rhino Bond issued by the World Bank with GEF funding, offers a payout linked to the protection of South Africa’s critically endangered black rhino.

A decade of restoration

It’s the ambition of the United Nations, working with diverse partners, to offer workable responses to land degradation during this critical decade, which aims to stop the degradation of ecosystems on every continent and in every sea.

It is in this spirit, that countries are meeting in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire for the 15th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, or COP15. It provides a vital opportunity not just to reverse the damage that has resulted from land degradation but also to address the overlapping issues such as land rights and gender equality associated with land governance.