Countries urgently need terrestrial plans to respond to the triple planetary crisis

Dr Raquel Agra, UNEP-WCMCs Deputy Director of Nature-Based Solutions, examines the challenges of land restoration, desertification and drought resilience. She argues that these present an opportunity to find common ground in tackling biodiversity loss, climate change and poverty, and that different nature-based solutions have a role to play.

Last month I returned from a trip to Brazil. I traveled through the North-East and Central-West regions, where one topic was on everyone's lips and covering the news: the extreme flooding of the Guaiba River basin, in southern Brazil. The loss of life and severe damage to property and infrastructure in Porto Alegre, the largest city in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, is devastating. Since June 3172 people have died, about 600,000 are homeless and more than 2.3 million have been affected.

The rains follow a four-year drought in Brazil, the worst in living memory. In November, Araua, a city in Minas Gerais state, hit the highest temperature ever recorded in Brazil at 44.8C. The drought has also turned the Amazon into a firebox, with recent fires surpassing the extreme 2019 season and accounting for the most Amazon fire outbreaks in 15 years.

I lived in the capital, Brasilia, between 2013 and 2020 and remember regular reports of a cycle of extreme weather from the south to the north of the country: heat waves, heavy rains, floods, droughts and forest fires. Scientists, with increasing confidence, can confirm that these disasters are linked. Last month The World Meteorological Organization has published a report suggesting that a combination of the El Nio climate pattern and climate change has caused 12 extreme weather events in just one year in Brazil.

These interrelated disasters remind us how intertwined the three Rio Conventions (the Convention on Biological Diversity, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change AND United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification) are, both in their challenges and in their shared solutions.

The floods in Rio Grande do Sul have also brought up discussions about the uneven distribution of the impacts of climate change. Studies have already shown that the most affected areas are those with the highest concentrations of people in poverty. Awareness of this disparity should inform conversations and problem-solving, at every level.

Land restoration is in the spotlight this year

In 2025, Brazil will host UNFCCC COP30 in the heart of the Amazon. This reflects the critical role the country can play in keeping the planet within the 1.5C target. Tackling biodiversity loss and halting land and ecosystem degradation will be crucial. But we look forward to 2025. 2024 now represents a concrete opportunity to raise ambitions in how we manage our land and take action to tackle the associated crises.

A healthy earth is at the heart of achieving climate, nature and sustainable development commitments. Land restoration and drought resilience represent common ground to address biodiversity loss, climate change impacts and poverty.

The importance of this year's agenda is clear. At the sixth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-6), a resolution was adopted to strengthen international efforts to combat desertification, restore degraded land, promote conservation and increase resilience to drought. The theme of World Environment Day 2024 focused on rebuilding our ecosystems to combat desertification and land degradation. UNCCD COP16 in Saudi Arabia this December will be vital for coordinated action on soil and drought resilience. Finally, this year World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought (17^th June) highlights the future of land management, supporting land care as an intergenerational responsibility.

As the Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, said declared last yearWwe depend on the land for our survival. However, we treat it as dirt.

We need to change our collective behavior. of key messages for today emphasize the importance of achieving restoration goals, slowing climate change, protecting nature and ensuring food security for billions around the world. Global commitments have been made. According to the UNCCD, over 130 countries have committed to achieving land degradation neutrality by 2030, meaning that every nation will achieve a neutral, or even positive, impact on land. Land restoration also features prominently in its objectives Global Biodiversity Framework (or Biodiversity Plan) and the UNFCCC agenda.

UNEP-WCMC works actively to support the UNCCD Global Mechanism. We are currently estimating the financing needed globally to implement the desertification, land degradation and drought targets by 2030. Our experts helped develop a methodology to estimate these financing needs and tested it in five countries: Morocco, Panama , Sri Lanka, Turkey and Moldova. . The quantification of these costs determined the scale of the land degradation problem, as a concrete issue where climate change and biodiversity loss interact. The work is all the more vital as most countries have to deal with drought, desertification and land degradation and lack the information to shape their priorities.

This assessment of financial needs will be presented in December at UNCCD COP16. It will be a critical planning tool in identifying gaps between actual and desired outcomes. The assessment will inform discussions on critical issues related to resource mobilization and implementation of the Convention.

UNEP-WCMC is also a partner agency of the UN Decade for Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), which aims to halt the degradation of ecosystems and restore them to achieve global goals – for the benefit of people and nature . Through ongoing expertise, partnerships, projects and collaborations, we provide the evidence needed to support nature's recovery and inform the prioritization, planning, effective implementation, scaling and monitoring of restoration actions worldwide.

Nature-based solutions to address drought and desertification

Innovative nature-based solutions (NbS) are at the forefront of tackling land degradation. NbS initiatives around the world have a significant impact on combating ecosystem degradation, restoring soil health and improving human well-being.

In my native Portugal, reuse strategies have achieved remarkable land restoration in The Great Valley of Ca, in the north of the country. The landscape was degraded and vulnerable to forest fires, posing a major threat to local communities and wildlife. Reducing the human footprint to allow natural ecological processes to re-establish has meant that the valley is now a revitalized natural landscape that native roe deer have returned to. It provides important ecosystem services such as fire prevention, food and other production. There are also enterprise opportunities such as wildlife tourism.

This project in the Great Valley of Ca was supported by Endangered Landscapes and Seascapes Program, a conservation initiative to restore and protect important natural habitats across Europe and beyond. UNEP-WCMC played a role by developing a guide to help restoration practitioners use two tools that quantify the climate change mitigation potential of ELSP landscape restoration projects.

UNEP-WCMC is involved in multiple areas of work to support governments, international initiatives and companies alike. As part ofEU Horizon 2020 Rexus projectUNEP-WCMC is working with partners to strengthen the business case for NbS as a way to deliver water, food and energy security in five drought-prone regions of Europe.

All our work at UNEP-WCMC is guided by our awareness that addressing land degradation represents a common basis for solving biodiversity loss, climate change, pollution and poverty. We can do this by establishing equitable, nature-based solutions guided by science. Projects such as the Great Ca Valley in Portugal demonstrate that addressing land degradation through NbS can bring many wide-ranging benefits to people and nature. Now, we need such efforts to be scaled up internationally to increase countries' resilience to disasters and prevent damage such as that seen recently in southern Brazil. To achieve this, the world must follow a coherent approach to its implementation The Paris Agreement on Climate Change,Global Biodiversity Framework ANDUN Convention to Combat Desertification.