Focus area: Land restoration

Land restoration is an urgent, worthwhile and achievable goal to address multiple global crises.
Now is the time to turn commitments into action.

• Up to 40 per cent of the world’s land is degraded, affecting half of humanity and with dire consequences for our climate, biodiversity and livelihoods. If current trends continue, restoring 1.5 billion hectares of land by 2030 will be necessary to achieve a land-degradation-neutral world.
• Between 2015 and 2019, at least 100 million hectares of healthy and productive land were degraded every year—adding up to twice the size of Greenland.
• Global voluntary commitments to restore degraded land have reached one billion hectares by 2030. Almost half of these are pledged under the UNCCD. Through the Global Land Initiative, the Group of Twenty (G20) members have pledged to halve land degradation by 2040.
• Breathing life back into land yields multiple benefits for people and nature. Every dollar invested in restoring degraded lands brings between $7-30 in economic returns. Policy and economic incentives are urgently needed to unlock a trillion-dollar restoration economy.
• At COP16, governments, businesses and civil society are expected to scale up and speed up land restoration in all parts of the world as a cost-effective solution to reach sustainable development goals.