Focus area: Land at the heart of SDGs

Land is at the heart of the sustainable development agenda.

• Healthy land can accelerate the achievement of all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Optimizing how land is used and managed across the landscape can contribute to climate and biodiversity targets, close the food gap, and promote human health and wellbeing.
• A growing world population drives growing demand for natural resources. By 2050, 10 billion people will share our one planet – depending on healthy land for their livelihoods.
• Food systems are the single biggest driver of land conversion, deforestation, and biodiversity loss. Scaling up nature-positive production is necessary to feed the world and protect the planet. We don’t need to convert more land if we manage the land already in use better and rehabilitate degraded land.
• The world’s land is a vital line of defense against climate change, contributing up to 30 per cent of mitigation efforts to keep global temperature increase below 1.5°C threshold by 2050.
• Land degradation is not just an environmental problem. It increases the risk of declining human health and the spread of new diseases. It is also the driver of forced migration and conflicts over scarce resources.
• At COP16, countries will come together to accelerate efforts to sustainably manage and restore land as a key driver of economic growth, prosperity and wellbeing, and to advance the SDGs.