Land degradation neutrality (LDN) became a global news headline in 2015: that year, the target of achieving LDN worldwide by 2030 was officially set as part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). This means ensuring that each country’s pool of healthy and productive land, on which it depends for ecosystem services1 (such as food, water and temperature regulation), remain at least stable going forward. At a minimum, the world needs to restore and rehabilitate the equivalent of at least 12 million hectares of degraded land to offset what we lose every year due to degradation and desertification (UNCCD, 2015). Moreover, the remainder of the world’s land must be managed through a broad spectrum of sustainable land use programmes. The key rationale behind the UNCCD’s conceptualisation of the Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) Fund is a realisation that public financing and projects alone are not sufficient to achieve the LDN target. Capital, ideas and innovations from the private sector are needed to complete the canvas. The aim of the LDN Fund is hence to create a PPP (public-private partnership) whereby large pools of capital can be mobilised to invest in profit-generating projects contributing to LDN.