Global cooperation and action are required to tackle land degradation and desertification and ensure a sustainable future.
In the face of a triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution, the world will come together on 5 June to mark World Environment Day. Hundreds of millions of people will engage in this milestone moment for environmental action.
Elizabeth Maruma Mrema Since 1973, World Environment Day led by the UN Environment Programme has helped to drive action on some of the planet's most-pressing environmental problems. This year, the Day will direct the world's gaze to three perilous, though often-overlooked, challenges: land degradation, desertification and drought.
One-fifth of earth's land is now degraded, lakes are shrivelling up, forests are disappearing, and farms are turning into dustbowls. This degradation affects the well-being of more than 3 billion people - and the problem is expected to get worse.
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration - which is proudly supporting World Environment Day - is helping to counter this crisis. Launched in 2021, the Decade is a global effort to prevent and reverse the damage caused by humanity to the natural world.
Three years in, countries have pledged to revive 1 billion hectares of land. That number is encouraging but it is just a start. We need to restore at least 1.5 billion hectares by 2030 if we are going to safeguard the web of life on Earth and avoid real consequences for ourselves, like food shortages.
Green jobs
Almost half of the area earmarked for ecosystem restoration is in Africa, where as much as 65 percent of productive land is degraded, and desertification affects 45 percent of the continent's land area. This restoration work has the potential to create millions of green jobs, and there is evidence of tremendous effort across the continent.
Hundreds of thousands of farmers across Africa living in poverty on degraded lands after decades of unsustainable agriculture practices, deforestation, pollution, and climate change are turning their dried-up monoculture plots into forest gardens through the African Farmers Restoring Food Systems. Led by Trees for the Future and using a 'Forest Garden' technique to plant fruit-producing trees that regenerate soil and enable it to grow fruits, vegetables, nuts, and other foods, the farmers have restored more than 41,000 hectares of a planned 229,000 hectares by 2030.
At a time when many deserts are expanding because of climate change, 22 countries in Africa's Sahel region are fighting back by building a Great Green Wall of restored forests and lands to stretch more than 8,000 kilometres across the continent.
I hope this World Environment Day can be a turning point in our race to restoration. Now is the time to move from commitments to action to prevent, halt and reverse ecosystem degradation.
We are the first generation to fully understand the immense threats to the land; we might be the last one with a chance to reverse the course of destruction. Our priority now must be on restoring ecosystems--on replanting our forests, on rewetting our marshes, on reviving our soils.
Restoring ecosystems
Restoration can create havens for wildlife, helping to foil the extinction crisis gripping our planet. It can counter climate change by reviving the ability of forests and rivers to store planet-warming carbon. It can create buffers around communities, protecting them from climate-related disasters, which are becoming more common by the year.
Restoration can also be a boon for economies: every dollar invested in reviving degraded lands brings up to 30 US dollars in economic returns. But for restoration to be successful, we need everyone onboard. Governments, businesses, scientists, faith-based organizations, civil society, and individuals must join forces.
In 1992, the world came together in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to adopt three landmark conventions covering climate change, biodiversity and desertification. These accords should serve as our North Star on the road to restoration. But we cannot stop the climate crisis today, biodiversity loss tomorrow, and land degradation the day after.
The Sixteenth Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is expected to be the largest-ever UN conference on land degradation and drought. This is an important opportunity to galvanize global efforts to address these critical issues because time is running short.
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We must tackle all these issues together - and acknowledge that healthy land is crucial for realizing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, due in six short years. The good news is, we have the solutions, the means and, with the UN Restoration Decade, the platform to restore our lands to their former glory.
We have to manage land more sustainability so that we build resilience and address poverty. We must acknowledge the value of biodiversity in our economic systems and build sustainability into the heart of decision-making and countries must now deliver on restoration commitments made.
We need a global resolve to live up to our restoration commitments. This year's World Environment Day is a golden opportunity to spur hundreds of millions of people to take action. We are the generation that can make peace with land. So let us undo the damage we have done; let us give this and the next generation a chance at a better future.
Elizabeth Maruma Mrema is Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme
