Restoring Land, Recognizing Rights: An ecocentric path to Land Degradation Neutrality

Land degradation is sustained by legal systems that treat land and ecosystems as property, making degradation lawful and restoration voluntary. Recognizing Nature as a subject of rights reverses that starting point: regeneration becomes a legal duty rather than a target, defensible before the courts and with a legal basis to prevent re-degradation. The session tests this approach against the lived experience of the Pacific, where salinization, drought and land loss threaten communities inseparable from their land and ocean, and connects it to Panama's Law 287 of 2022 and its initiative toward a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Nature at the United Nations General Assembly.