UNCCD COP17

Let me begin by bringing warm greetings of Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, and by thanking you, Mr. President, and the Government and people of Mongolia for bringing COP17 to Ulaanbaatar, and for the extraordinary warmth and generosity you have shown all of us.

The care that Mongolia has brought to hosting this COP can be felt everywhere, and your personal leadership, Mr. President, has made it clear how much the discussions in these very difficult global times, week mean to Mongolia and to the wider world, to multilateralism – and we are deeply grateful for that.

Mr. President, Ladies and gentlemen,

Here in Mongolia, the birthplace of Gengis Khan, and for communities across the world, land is life, and land is livelihoods, especially for our nomads and indigenous peoples.

In 2023 and 2024, a summer drought followed by a severe dzud led to the loss of more than seven million livestock. Herds built over generations disappeared.

For many families, the loss took away their assets, their income and the means to recover before the next difficult season.

What Mongolia endured is part of a crisis that is unfolding across the world. Since 2000, droughts have increased in frequency and duration by 29 per cent. By 2050, three out of every four people could be affected.

This room brings decades of lived experiences and expertise in responding. Many of you have developed national plans, tested solutions, and learned what works in your own countries.

Now we need to turn that experience into delivery: by restoring land at scale, financing national action and putting the people who live in and from the land in the lead.

Let’s start with the scale.

Scale means moving beyond individual projects and putting national plans to work- ones that leave no one behind.

Up to 40 per cent of the world’s land is degraded, weakening food production and livelihoods.

Individual projects can prove what works, but they cannot restore land at the scale and with the sense of urgency that is needed.

More than 70 countries have developed national drought plans with support from the UNCCD. Many of you have done that work. You know best what your countries need.

The challenge now is to have the fiscal space so that those plans can go from resolutions to reality.

Here in Mongolia, sustainable rangeland management protects pastoral livelihoods and the land. Across the Sahel, communities are restoring degraded land and making it productive again. The initiative of the AU great green wall is one that demonstrates this.

The settings differ, but the lesson is the same: restoration strengthens resilience when it protects how people make a living and thrive.

Scale also means connecting restored land to water and the wider economy. Producers need the infrastructure, skills and technology to reach markets, selling what they produce, and this includes through the new era of technology and e-commerce.

All of this takes national programmes, cooperation across borders and investment that stays in place long enough for restored land to recover. And that brings me to the next point:

Scaling up depends on predictable and sustainable financing, the means of implementation.

Countries need long-term investment that follows their national priorities and stays in place long enough for restored land to recover and prosper. And public finance can help reduce the risk and bring in private investment for approaches that have already proven their value.

We already have tools to move this forward. The Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership and its Investment Facility can help countries turn drought plans into funded programmes. Business4Land can bring companies into that effort.

But those tools will only make a difference if countries can reach them and can use them.

You should not be asked to develop national plans and then be left to search for the means to deliver them. Finance has to be in place to invest in the priorities that countries have set for themselves.

Finance gives countries not only the means to act, but to grow their economies.

The people who live from the land must inform the decisions that shape its future.

Pastoralists managing rangelands and farmers rebuilding depleted soil bring the knowledge of generations. They understand what their land can sustain in a way that no one else can.

As you decide how restoration will be financed, bring those people into the decisions from the beginning, co-creating with them.

Give them secure rights and a genuine say over how investment will be deployed.

Putting people, women and men, in the lead also means ownership and improving their outcomes: restoration can create skilled work and new sources of income. Those jobs should be decent, allowing growth and prosperity, inclusion, and social protection must be an integral part of that safety net.

The Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection for Just Transitions was built to deliver exactly that pairing. In Indonesia and Bhutan, they are already proving it can be done. COP17 can bring the same approach to land restoration, connecting investment in soil health with investment in the people doing the work.

But jobs and income are only part of the equation. There is a much more fundamental issue of power.

We cannot ask people to restore land while denying them meaningful rights over that land.

And nowhere is that contradiction clearer than for women.

Eighty-six per cent of the countries that report their land tenure data to the United Nations show fewer women than men with secure rights over agricultural land.

But when women are given rights over the land they work, they restore it — and they keep restoring it. Mali has shown this in its demonstrations.

In Bandigara, a woman named Florence Banou is leading a women’s cooperative that restores degraded land and expands local food production. When the municipality saw the results, it granted the cooperative four acres to expand its work.

Four acres may look small against a global restoration target, but for those women, it meant land they could rely on, and room to grow their livelihoods.

Access to land is only the beginning. Women also need access to finance, skills, technology and markets so they can build businesses and keep more of the value their work creates.

Restoration should not leave women doing the work while others capture the economic benefits. It should give them a greater stake in both the land and the prosperity that it creates.

And COP17 is an opportunity to give communities everywhere the same chance.

Finally, let me say that on each of these three aspects – going to scale, providing sustainable and predictable finance with a people centered approach - the United Nations will continue to do its part and support Member States in that endeavor.

For us, the work begins in the communities at the country level.

The UN80 reforms are making our support more responsive and easier for governments to use: a single country team, working with a single joined-up strategy, under the leadership of our resident coordinators.

Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen,

Healthy land gives people something fundamental: the ability to build a future where they already belong and can thrive.

COP17 can put that future within reach by matching national ambition with finance and trusting the people who steward the land to lead.

The land has sustained humanity throughout history.

Let’s leave Ulaanbaatar ready to sustain and to protect this land in return.

Thank you.

[END]