(Ecofin Agency) – In 2024, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) celebrates its 30th anniversary. Although it represents a major step forward, challenges remain with land degradation accelerating around the world.
On Monday, December 2, the 16th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) opened in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. With this event under the theme “Our land. Our future”, the organization intends to place soils at the center of the international political agenda, along with climate change and biodiversity.
This meeting will bring together members of civil society, experts and political decision-makers from 196 countries and the European Union (EU) over 12 days. This is the first UNCCD COP to be held in the Middle East and the most important multilateral conference ever hosted by the world’s leading producer of black gold.
Beyond the symbols, delegations will have to face a major challenge: finding solutions to the threat posed by land degradation for global food systems.
A statistic gives the extent of the issues: 40%. According to the UNCCD, this is the proportion of degraded agricultural land on the planet, or 1.5 billion hectares, an unproductive area almost equivalent to that of Russia (1.7 billion hectares). This degradation directly affects the livelihoods of almost half of the world’s population who depend on agri-food systems.
According to the UN, 60% of land degradation attributed to human activity concerns agricultural land, and each year, 1 million km² of healthy, productive land is lost.
$2.6 trillion in investments needed by 2030
Like the conferences on climate and biodiversity, the question of financing will be at the heart of the discussions. For Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the UNCCD, 2,600 billion dollars of investments will be required by 2030 to achieve a world neutral in terms of land degradation. This amount is equivalent to the GDP of a country like Italy in 2023 and concretely involves nearly $1 billion per day for the next 6 years.
At a time when the effects of climate change are increasingly threatening and in a context where the need for food will increase with the world population which is expected to approach 10 billion human beings by the middle of the century, various organizations have already called for concrete actions while countries have already committed to protecting around 900 million hectares of land.
For his part, Mr. Thiaw invited the private sector to take an active part in the work alongside governments, to take responsibility and take out… the checkbook.
« The majority of investment in land restoration worldwide comes from public funds. And that’s not normal. Indeed, the main driver of land degradation worldwide is food production, which is in the hands of the private sector “, he points out before wondering: “ How is it that one hand degrades the land and the other is responsible for restoring and rehabilitating it? »
It must be said that the private sector currently provides only 6% of the funds needed to rehabilitate damaged land. According to the UN, only $66 billion has been invested (all sources combined) for the restoration of degraded lands in 2022 while there is an annual deficit of $278 billion.
« The resources we are talking about are not charity. It is therefore important that we do not see this as an investment for poor Africans, but as an investment that will maintain the balance of the world », Underlines the manager.
In the meantime, several observers emphasize that obtaining a binding agreement for States or the draft of an international legal instrument in favor of concrete actions will be the mother of all the battles that will be waged by the delegations. The objective is to prevent this new summit from becoming only a symbolic addition to the UN agenda. The countdown is on…
Espoir Olodo
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