Living soils, Productive Lands: From Policies to Implementation - Action Dome, UNCCD COP17

Good morning.
Good morning, everyone.
Please take your seat.
We are about to start our first.
Exchange.
The the bedroom at the Santo just wanted to the machines were pushed me to the bedroom to Then we'll hear directly from countries and partners about what implementation actually looks like, what works, what makes restoration investable, and how these new tools can help.
So let's start.
It's now my pleasure to start with, to welcome Beth Bechdol, who's Deputy Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations for opening remarks.
Beth, over to you.
No, it's fine.
It's fine.
Thank you.
Gives me something to put these comments down on.
Excellencies, distinguished delegates and colleagues and friends who are here in this room.
We always talk a great deal about agriculture, but with a mindset about what agriculture produces above the ground.
And I think when we contemplate what every crop, every pasture, and ultimately every food system depends upon, we have to focus, and that's why we're here at this COP and in this session.
We have to focus on what is happening beneath it.
Soil determines what can be planted, how water is held, which nutrients are available, and ultimately how productive that land can be.
But in too many places, we are making decisions about agriculture without knowing enough about the soils on which those decisions depend.
The consequences, we've just heard, 1 billion hectars of cropland and pasture land that are already degraded worldwide.
That is significant.
At Cp 16 in Riyadh, parties called for stronger action to avoid, reduce, and reverse the degradation of agricultural lands and soils.
And here in Olam Qatar, the question is how we turn that commitment into action.
That is what this session is about.
Today, we will hear new findings from the status of the World's soil Resources, 2026, an incredibly important compendium and document that I hope you and others spend time studying and absorbing.
And importantly, FAO and UN CCD are launching new guidance on living soils, productive lands, and resilient landscapes.
You will hear much more from others about this guidance from the speakers who follow me, but its importance is clear.
It's very straightforward.
It helps countries move from understanding the problem to deciding what to do about it.
And it takes the principle agreed by the parties.
First, avoid degradation, then reduce it, and then reverse it where degradation has already occurred.
And this guidance helps translate those objectives into practical actions for governments and parties to take.
Because countries need more than just one more global assessment.
We do a lot of assessments, whether they're at the national level, whether they're at country level, regional, global level, countries need to understand their soils, their characteristics, their condition, their nutrient requirements, and their productive potential.
This is not just soil mapping.
This is soil intelligence.
If we understand our soils better, we can make better decisions about what to plant.
We can use fertilizer and nutrients more precisely.
We can manage water more effectively, and we can better target restoration, and we can make new technologies, including precision agriculture, much more useful to farmers.
A soil map is only valuable when it changes a decision.
Otherwise, it's just more information.
For a farmer, this means knowing what a field actually needs before investing in fertilizer or any other kind of practice or technique.
For a government, it might mean designing agricultural policies and programs around actual soil conditions rather than averages or assumptions.
For investors, better information can help identify where restoring agricultural land can deliver both productive and let's admit, economic returns and benefits.
This is already moving, I'm excited to say, from concept to practice.
Through a program that FAO operates with other partners called soil Firm, we are supporting seven countries to start across Africa and Central America to strengthen soil information and mapping and critically their ability to use that information in agricultural decision making.
That connection between knowledge and decisions, as I said, is essential.
The challenge today though, is truly implementation, and that's what we'll be moving into with the rest of the presentations this morning, taking the science and putting it into work in the field, in pastures, in policies, and investments.
And that is also why tools being presented today matter, whether it's the guidance, it's the digital companion, and the latest raise mapping tools, these can help countries move from evidence toward action and from restoration priorities toward investment.
But tools alone will not restore a hector or an acre of land.
Countries need the capacity and the knowledge to be able to use them.
Farmers and pastoralists need information that they can act on, and investment needs to follow and flow where evidence tells us it can make a difference.
So as we begin and I transition to the rest of the speakers and our panelists today, maybe I leave you with three questions in your mind as you think about what you're hearing.
One, do we really understand our soils? Do we have that complete picture and knowledge of the global soil resources, country level resources in the year 2026? Are we using that knowledge to make better agricultural decisions that protect the health of those soils and their productive potential? And third, are we investing in the right places with the right resources? If we can begin to answer those questions, we will move from policies to implementation.
And more importantly, we can protect the very productive foundation which every agri food system depends, and that's our world's soils.
Thank you so much to everybody for being with us for this important event this morning.
I also want to thank the United States government that has supported our soil for program.
They have really invested deeply, continue to be actively engaged.
And I'm looking forward, I think, in the days and months to come as we recognize Importance of our soil productive capacities, it's time to really focus on this soil intelligence and to say, we understand all of the world's soils, and together, we have all of that intelligence gathered so that all of the countries of the world and the farmers can make better productive decisions going forward for themselves.
So thank you again to all of you for being here.
Thanks to UN CCD for being such a great partner to FAO.
Thanks again.
Many thanks, Beth and thank you for your challenging questions which are important, indeed.
So next, we are going to focus on the status of the World's Soil Resources 2026 and to present its findings, I'm delighted to welcome Professor Baderash Singh, who's chair of the Intergovernmental Technical Panel on SOLS ITPS.
Welcome, Professor.
Thank you.
Good morning, Excellencies, distinguished delegates and colleagues.
I will go a bit faster because I have to cover a lot of slides today to give you some flavor of the reports and these recommendations.
Let me start with saying that it is a privilege to present the status of the Wold SWA Resource 2026, an FO report developed through the Global SWAP Partnerships under the scientific responsibility of the intergovernmental Technical Panel on SLS.
This report provides a global assessment of whether sustainable soil management is being adopted at the scale and pace needed to respond to mounting pressures on the W swaps.
Next slide, please.
The pressures on the swales continues to grow.
Since 2015, the global population has increased around 0.8 billion people.
Demand for food, feed, fiber, and flow continues to rise, while urbanis geopolitical instability, the market volatility and the climate impacts intensify competitions for land and natural resources.
These pressures drive the land use changes, sustainable farming, industrial expenses, and pollutions.
And when soil lose their capacity to function, their constancy extend far beyond the land.
Food production becomes insecure, water regulations weakens, biodiversity declines, and the communities becomes more vulnerable to drought and other shocks.
Next slide, please.
SWS 2026 assess the state and trends in the adoptions of sustainable soil management practice across seven regions of global soil partnerships.
It examines management responses to seven major threats, soil erosion, loss of soil organic carbon, nutritious mismanagement, loss of soil biodiversity, salt accumulations, soil pollutions, and urbanization and the soil sealing.
But this is not simply another inventory of the soil degradation.
The report determines whether current management response are sufficient whether the adoption of sustainable practice is improving or deteriorating and where support and investments are most needed.
Next slide, please.
The report draws on the scientific literatures published 2015-2025 and the knowledge of more than 300 SWAL experts across the globe.
The regional and sub regional assessments captured important differences that a single global average would conceal oil pressure, farming systems, institutional capacity, and socioeconomic realities vary considerably, not only between the regions, but also within them.
The report also provides confidence rating.
Reflects the quantity and the quality of the available evidence and digity of the scientific agreements.
Next slide, please.
The assessment distinguishes between two dimensions, state and trend.
The states reflects how effective the management practice in place as of 2015 and where in preventing or reducing sexual threat.
The trend shows whether the adoptions of sustainable practice improved, remains same, or deteriorated between 2015 and late 2024.
One methodological caution is sincere here.
SWSR 27 26 complement the 2015 assessment, but it is not a direct update of the earlier SADC conditions rating.
The two reports use different approaches.
Next slide, please.
This figure brings the regional and sub regional findings together.
The colored circles indicate how effective the management practice are in addressing each step.
The arrow shows the direction of the change in adoptions of sustainable management practices.
This is not a ranking of regions.
It shows where action is advancing and where support is most needed.
The overall picture is concerning.
More than half of the regional and sub regional assessment rate current management as a poor or very poor, only 14% rate it as good and very good.
Some progress is evident from this report.
But overall, the way we manage global soil shows remain unsustainable.
Next slide, please.
Five main finding emerged from this reports include, first, we are not moving fast enough.
58% of regional and sub regional assessments report a deteriorating trend in the adoption of sustainable management practice.
The report ranks following as the most severe threats to soil soil erosion, loss of organic carbon, nutant mismanagement, and loss of soil biodiversity.
Second, soil threats are interconnected.
Third, effective solutions exist, but their adoption remains difficult.
Fourth, enabling policies, institutions, and finance determines the pace of changes.
Finally, the information capacity and the inclusive governance determines whether knowledge becomes actions.
Next slide, please.
Eroges illustrate the scale of challenge.
As the regional and sub regional assessment, 81% reported the rate of a state of management addressing erosion as a poor or very poor, while 65% report a deteriorating trend since 2015.
No reason or sub region is currently assessed as being a favorable conditions for soil biodiversities.
Nutrients challenges differ sharply.
Nutrient mining undermines the soil fertility and food production in some regions elsewhere, excessive or poorly managed inputs contribute to the polltion.
These threats do not occur in ay issues.
They reinforce one another, creating degradation casket.
But this also creates some opportunities.
Tackling one threat can generate benefit across the swale functions.
Next slide, please.
The core challenge now is no longer a lack of knowledge or technical solutions.
We have a strong evidence for practices that can improve soil health or soil status such as crop diversification, cover crops, integrated nutrient management, organic amendments, and reduced tillage, where there is no universal solutions.
Practice must fill the local conditions, local soils, farming systems, and socioeconomic conditions.
Yet around 52% of the regional and sub regional assessments report low or very low adoption of sustainable soil management practice.
Why? Because land users face systematic barriers.
These includes upfront costs, delayed returns, and limited access to finance, weak advisory services, and inadequate soil information restrict informed decisions.
Fragmented governance and land chau challenges, gender based constraints, and insufficient integrations of local and indigenous knowledge create further obstacles.
Sustainable practice must therefore be not only technically effective, they must also be accessible, feasible, and economically attractive for the land users to adopt and maintain.
Next slide, please.
The report identifies five main priorities actions.
First, a strengthen governance and the legal framework by putting swils at the heart of laws, policy, land use planning, and developmental agenda.
Second, invest in education, capacity development, and exchange of scientific, traditional, and indigenous knowledge.
Third, measure progress through the harmonized soil data, context specific indicators, and sustained monitoring.
Fourth, reward those who protect soils through well targeted financial, economic, and policy incentives.
And fifth, a strengthened inclusive partnership among the governments, scientists, farmer, indigenous people, communities, civil society, and the private sectors to design, implement, and invest in integrated solutions.
Taken together, these priorities show how we can turn evidence into actions.
Next slide, please.
The findings are shocking, but they also give us clear directions.
We know which practice can protect and restore swals.
We also understand the systematic barriers preventing their adoptions.
How these swals must be recognized as a estrategic asset.
Investing in swil health brings substantial socioeconomic and environmental returns far outweigh the cost of inactions.
The challenge is acting with the urgency, ambition, long term commitment, and the scale that it requires.
Healthy SOLs are one of our greatest natural allies, and we already know how to protect them.
Now is the time to put that knowledge into actions.
I invite you to explore the full report.
This is the policy documents, and this is a SOD version of that document.
I invite you to explore that full report and to join us moving from SOL exploitation to SOL stewardships and from evidence to implement.
I thank you for listing us, and I wish you all the best for the confidence.
Thank you.
Thank you, Professor Singer.
This makes for a rather sobering diagnosis.
So what are we actually doing about it? The new FAO UNCCD guidance, living soils, productive lands, resilient landscapes, is designed precisely to help countries avoid, reduce, and reverse agricultural land and soil degradation, and to translate policy commitments into implementation.
So to introduce the guidance, please join me in welcoming Baron Joseph Or, Chief Scientist at UNCCD and Swilni Racton Romago who's Land and Water Officer in FAO's Land and Water Division.
Welcome to both of you.
Well, good morning, everyone.
You're very brave to be here at the first session and I'm really glad that you're here and I'm honored to be here with you.
I'm really proud of what was accomplished between you and CCD and FAO.
Probably should say it the other way around since they did the majority of the work.
But actually from a conceptual point of view and where we are today with technology for learning, I think you will find this highly progressive.
What you're going to see presented by Sowa in just a moment.
But I happen to be part of this process, part of the COP.
My backside is stuck in a chair for 12 hours a day in these negotiations.
I thought I would give you an insight on where all this comes from and where it may go from the global policy perspective.
In COP 16, which was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for the first time in my experience in relation to these processes, parties negotiated up instead of down to the least common denominator.
Usually, when they don't agree, they go down to something they agree.
But in this case, the regions, usually the differences are across regions, not always, they actually came together and said, Well, if you're interested in bringing in integrated water management, we're interested in bringing in something related to biodiversity, and they agreed.
So a draft decision, as it's called in the beginning, went from two or three quite vanilla paragraphs that wouldn't have done much to move the agenda forward into ten or 12 paragraphs that were highly progressive, even including in the preamble of the decision.
What does that mean? It means you launched.
It means that action is possible because there's global consensus around every word in that decision, decision 19.
One of those words was, can we create some guidance? All of us that know about guidance said, Oh, my goodness, what are we talking? Another 700 page handbook and it's going to sit on the shelf.
But the party said they didn't want that.
They wanted something that conceptually framed how to go forward.
Locked in to land degradation neutrality, which has very clear sets of steps and modules so that it was easy to see, something that scaled from the global level to the national level, to the local level, and something that recognized, which very few people recognize that almost all of our effort has been what to do here.
I have this farm, this piece of land, I need to know what to do here.
But from a policy perspective, actually the link between policy and action on the ground is land use planning.
Integrated land use planning, not a concept that was part of the discussion until only a few years ago.
What does it mean? It means that we navigate the competing demands for land, environmental, social, and economic, and we optimize what we do where.
It's not just what we plant, it's where we plant it all the way down to the farm field level.
And all of that was embraced by A FAO.
They took that frame, they created the guidance, and then another part of FAO, highly progressive with using new technologies, allowed us to integrate this guidance into an AI enabled system called ATO.
You can learn about it more in the Mongolia house in 10:00 if you'd like to know more, maybe Slade will describe it.
But what does that mean? Instead of 700 pages, it's probably closer to 10,000 pages of guidance.
Every single validated piece of guidance that any of you as stakeholders said is relevant and is already agreed in this context, be absorbed in this AI and prioritized when you ask the bot a question.
How powerful is that? You get a starting point right away.
I'm trying to do this.
Where do I start? Traceability, you now have guidance and you don't have to only resort to what the bot says, It guides you to what's underlying.
Super powerful.
Is it going to be cutting edge? I think so.
Is it going to be perfect? Well, it will be if you use it.
The more you use it, the better it will be trained, the more effective it will be.
So I will leave you with that.
Right now, I've got to go back to the negotiations on this round of agricultural lands.
And what I'll tell you is that for all the other decisions, I'm answering question after question after question from the parties.
Not this one.
They know what they want.
It's not always in agreement that makes it tough.
But they aren't asking a single substantive question related to this.
They are ready to go, and I think you with this approach in FAO is empowering them to get there.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Baron and for that clear picture and thank you for making the time today.
We really appreciate the time and the collaborations you put into this.
And let me walk you through why we are here, why the guidance is needed, how it is developed, and what it offered to us here.
As Baron highlighted earlier, the decision 19 or can I have it? The decision 19 gave the mandate for the work.
And the guidance turn that mandate into practical options for countries to avoid, reduce, and reverse the degradation of agriculture land and soil.
In the decision that he mentioned earlier, parties committed to four things, science, nature, and ecosystem based solutions, improving the health of agriculture, land, and soil, advancing integrated water management and sustainable food system and requesting FM partner to develop this guidance.
So how was it developed? The guidance was developed collaboratively.
It was not written in isolations.
Over nine months from October 2025 up to June 2026, we run a broad participatory consultations.
This included the youth and indigenous people, in Rome, technical review in house for FAO, but also consultation with countries and convention bodies and engagement with private sector that we presented here.
The document then went through a formal review stage review in CCD, where parties and convention constituencies also provide feedback both on the guidance and its digital component.
So the result both reflect strong technical input, but also broad ownership from the participatory process.
So What is this document about? First, it is a voluntary guidance designed to be adapted and adopted to national and local priorities.
This is not applied as a one size fits all at all.
It cover basically three things, the integrated land use planning for land degradation neutrality, Diversified and resilient production system and a set of enabling policy environment that is needed to support the change.
And it is designed for all of us for policymakers to planners, from practitioners to investors, from farmers to pastoralists and indigenous peoples and civil society.
And it also come with a digital company that is hosted in the FAO AO knowledge base, and I'll come to that shortly.
Now, in this forum, I understand there's a lot of discussion going on, but the base of this guidance is grounded in eight guiding principle.
Together, this principle makes sure that agriculture, land, and soil restoration is environmentally sound, socially inclusive, but also economically viable.
They include the right to food, the secure land and tenure, inclusive governance, integrating climate, biodiversity, and land degradation objective, and precisely evidence based management as we hear from Professor earlier on.
Now, let's start with the Module two.
What do you mean by integrated land use planning and for land degradation neutrality? First, it's a continuous three step cycle.
We need to understand first through assessment the extent and driver of the degradation of land and soil.
This constitutes our baseline.
The step two is to plan, and we advise that you set the national land degradation neutrality target using, for example, the FAO step framework for ELP.
And three, monitor, track land cover, productivity, and soil carbon, and then feed the resome back into the next cycle.
Now, the third module is on production system, so integrating diversified and resilient production system.
It's cover both the croplands, including the crop rotations, intercropping techniques, the reduced tillage or integrated cropland stock system, but also for pasture, it cover rotational grazing, drought tolerant species, and pastoral mobility.
The message here is quite simple and powerful food production, water, soil health, and ecosystem need to be managed together, not separately.
Then we have the model four, which is the six pillars.
None of these work without the right enabling environment, and that is why where the leadership of parties here really matters.
The guidance set out six pillars, governance and tenure because we know that 35% of the word land is formally documented.
That means that secure tenure is really the foundation for investment.
Second one, policy and market.
Why? Because current policies and credible standard can turn sustainability into an opportunity, not a cost.
Then the science and the data tools and approaches like the AO knowledge base or the world overview of conservation approaches and technologies, work tools and practice, and the Farmer F School can turn the evidence into the practice.
And finally, investment because investing not only on financing, but also on capacity, the CCD estimates that we will need $2.6 trillion to restore 1 billion of Hector by 2030.
Yet really a small share of climate finance is private.
These six pillars of enabling environment are what turn a document on a shelf into really a change underground.
Now let us now move to the tools that really brings this guidance to life and you call it the digital Companion hosted at AAO at your knowledge base.
To it's really one package.
When you have the policy guidance on one left side, You have the practical implementation support.
The digital company, we have been carefully curating it.
It is linking, any user to more than 500 tools and frameworks that we have identified not only FAO MCD, but also with technical experts from around the world in science and technology.
I invite you to exploit yourself.
The link and the QR code are there, but also on our closing slide.
Now, there are basically free way to access it.
Once you have the website, you can go to the framework first.
This is basically it's like you read a book.
You can first understand and explore the taxonomy or they call it the framework behind the guidance.
So basically, we have 500 tools that you compile together.
We can start first like, Okay, integrated land use planning.
Then you can explore what do we mean by that? What are the steps that can be needed? So you can, for example, have assessment, inside assessment, what are the type of activities that can help anybody, understand or implement what is in there and what does it mean.
It organizes around levels and clusters, and please do feel free to explore further.
The second one is you can use as well, what I call the smart search and filter.
Just use any keywords that come to your mind.
I want to do restoration of soil and explore where does it find.
And you type there and you see and also you can refine the search through using the tools where it can be applied, and what are the user and which are the final? Is it for avoiding or reducing reversing degradation of agreeance.
The third one that we are still adjusting is.
It's chat GPT, maybe it's a chat bot that we are still testing and strengthening its capacity so that it can respond to any language that you might have.
So what are the climate stage that we want to share with you from this presentation for the guidance, but also the digital companion.
The guidance close with five priorities for action.
First, prioritize agricultural lands in national land degradation virtually targets an action plan.
Two, you really need to strengthen the assessment and monitoring so we have scientifically sound data that we can use for decision making process with indicators that is fit for the diversified production system.
Third is to scale up scale diversified resilient production system through coordinations and policy support.
Four, connect the dots between the climate, biodiversity, and land across the Rio convention, and five, engage through the guidance, digital companion.
Now, you can both access now the guidance and its digital companion.
You just simply scan the QR code on the left side for the guidance and the right side at your knowledge base.
Invite, explore them at your own pace today, Next week, anytime you have some time, I will leave it there for 30 seconds because I see some people are still scanning.
Yes.
And then, or you can approach bilateral if you want.
Then after you explore, we also welcome the feedback, especially on the digital company so that we can also strengthen it, improve it at the traditional knowledge that is needed, and you can reach us.
I give our email address here and I sell agriculture guidance at f.org.
Thank you.
Over to you, Madam Moderator.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Swinand and thank you, Barn too, of course.
Implementation, it requires knowing where to act, what interventions are appropriate, and how to build the economic and financial case for doing so.
Which brings us to Raz, resilient agriculture Investment for net land degradation.
It's a mapping tool designed to help bridge that gap between land restoration ambition and I planning.
This morning we will see its new iteration, including an application to Australia.
To take us through it, please welcome the Vari Nola from UNCCD and A Rey, CD LD from the Food and Land use Coalition.
Welcome to both of you.
Everybody can hear me? Great.
Hello, everyone.
My name is Irini Pizili.
I'm the head of International Policy for Food and Land use Coalition.
I'm very excited to be here today with all of you to talk about the resilient Agriculture investment for net land degradation or else Raise Accelerator.
Raise is an initiative of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock of Brazil launched at the UFC Cop 30 in a flagship program under the FOL Fas Partnership implemented in collaboration with the UN CCD G 20 Global and Initiative.
And the Food and Land use Coalition, and, of course, the support of several technical partners.
The subject of our event today is agricultural lands, and that's exactly what the focus of RAS is.
Ras is a global effort to map and mobilize funding for the restoration of farmlands worldwide, and it does so through four distinct pillars, Pillar one, mapping and identifying investable restoration needs, Pillar two, costing restoration needs, Pillar three, design financial mechanisms for restoration, Pillar four measurement implementation, measurement knowledge sharing for countries, for financial actors and other stakeholders.
Now, what is an initiative that was launched at the Climate Cop is doing at the desertification cop? The answer is very, very simple.
Land and soil do not see difference between, you know, land and soil Actually, let me rephrase that.
L and soil are not separate from climate and biodiversity, not for nature, not for nature, not for farmers.
And my hope is that that's the same for countries, that's the same for investors, and that's the same for all other stakeholders involved in restoration.
Now, within this triple Cp year, RE will attempt to build strongly the economic and financial case for farmland restoration, building on Brazil's greenway and amplifying the message that farmland restoration is crucial can be costed, can be financed, and most importantly, can be implemented and is profitable.
And on this journey, I know we're not alone.
I've been here for about a week now and I've been hearing similar conversations.
I know many of you are having similar conversations.
So my message to you is very simple.
Let us have those conversations together.
Our focus today is Pillar one of Raise and the launch of the new iteration of the Raise mapping tool.
And before I pass the baton to my colleague Deval Sri, I would like to take a moment in line with Res pillar four on knowledge sharing, touch upon the two restoration cases from Australia.
So Australia is one of the countries that have endorsed race.
Now, these cases showcase that under race, the options are numerous and can speak to the restoration needs of a country like Brazil, but also a country like Australia, which is the driest inhabited continent with drought a recurring feature of its landscapes.
So I will start with the Australian government's future drought Fund.
The FDF was established in 2019 with an initial investment of 3.9 billion Australian dollars, reaching 5 billion Australian dollars in December 2024.
Each year returns from the fund are made available as grants to build drought resilience across Australia's landscapes, communities, and the agricultural sector.
The demonstration of bare ground restoration in the Southern Gulf region is an example of a project delivered by the Southern Gulf NRM with FDF grant funding of 667,500 Australian dollars.
The project supported drought resilience by restoring and maintaining the grazing potential of land, including during drought season.
The FDF grant was supported by in kind contributions from key delivery partners.
Now, the outcomes from this project are extremely encouraging and act as evidence to guide future investment by identifying where restoration is likely to be effective, where natural recovery may be sufficient, and where targeted interventions are needed.
The second case I want to talk about is the Climate Smart Agriculture Program.
This is a five year and 302.1 million Australian dollar government investment into sustainable agriculture and natural resource management running until June 2028.
Through targeted investment, it is building capabilities, strengthening knowledge, and accelerating the adoption of sustainable practices across the agricultural sector in Australia.
The program is primarily delivered through competitive grants, procurement arrangements, and targeted funding.
It is supported by significant investment of in kind contributions from the state and territory governments, but also philanthropic research and private partners.
Now, under the Climate Smart Agriculture Program in Australia, the University of Queensland Project funded through a 1 million Australian dollar grant, and It's restoring soil action and stability to improve soil structure, enhance water infiltration and retention, and reduce erosion risk.
Early results of this program, of this project show significant increases in biomass and soil organic carbon, supporting long term gains in soil stability.
I would like to end with the following raise in Portuguese means root and roots do not grow overnight.
They certainly don't.
I know that because I'm a very keen gardener, and neither will this work.
But every hector restore and every partnership we build is a root going deeper.
Thank you very much.
Over to you Devsri.
Thank you, Irine.
Hello.
Can you hear me? Yes.
Thank you, Irine.
Thank you, colleagues for, first of all, this opportunity.
Thank you to FAO and our two governments, Brazil and Mongolia for being such amazing countries to work with.
Now, let's go towards the RIEs mapping tool.
I'll go towards the methodology first.
I think this is a bit better.
Let's go towards the RIAs mapping tool and think about how data can then give us a bit of an idea as to where to invest and how we can use data to understand where investment makes much more sense.
So this is the type of methodology that we are thinking of.
I'll give a bit of a personal story here as we talk.
Nepal has its glacier lake outburst and a flash flood, which was massive.
I come from Nepal.
The reason why vulnerability assessment is important is because we've lost livelihoods, lives, investment.
We've lost all of these things.
Vulnerability assessments is one of the methodologies that even during my masters, we studied that this is quite important, and this is essential not just to understand biophysical aspects, but also socioeconomic aspects.
So let's go through the methodology.
We're talking about, let's say, if you look at a high vulnerability in a certain area, it means that there's a high need of investment.
But also urgent need of investment in that particular area.
If you look at low adaptive capacity, it means high leveraging point.
And if there is declining resilience in a certain area, it means urgent intervention is required.
The reason why we go with this assessment for our mapping tool is because number one, this is something that is dictated by IPCC.
This is something that is agreed by UNFC.
This is something that FAO is comfortable in working and other agencies as well, that is in that field which are comfortable in working.
So let me go through the quick formula of integrated vulnerability assessment where we talk about exposure, sensitivity, impact, adaptive capacity, and vulnerability.
Where exposure, it is more so climatic.
This explains, let's say, natural extent of a system in terms of climatic phenomena.
We put sensitivity, which is the weakness of the ecosystem.
What I mean by that is, how is the natural and the physical environment in terms of the soil, in terms of the slope, in terms of whether there's enough sunshine in that area or not, very important for both cropland and pastureland.
Then mining them both, we get potential impact, but the main important aspect for us here today is adaptive capacity, the capacity of a society, or community, or ecosystem to bounce back to the potential impact, which also includes our economic activities.
For example, nightlight, Nlight is a very good example of whether economic activity is happening in that area or not.
Roads, we have schooling, we have cell phones, we have electricity, we have water.
These are important aspects to consider even for industries, even for potential investors.
So then we have finally the vulnerability, where we combine everything and we get this vulnerability, mapping or analysis.
Now quickly go through the different pillars that we have.
This is adaptive capacity, the economic activity that I told you about where we have social development, infrastructure, and economy and governance.
We have sensitivity, where we have natural sensitivity.
You can see the different indicators, population livelihood, and manmade pressure.
Then we have our third element, which is exposure.
I mentioned that climate change is very important in this context.
I rephrase it anthropogenic climate change because what you see today might not be what you see tomorrow, and this is what the Rise mapping tool does.
It also projects.
You can also see where investment would make sense for the future.
So this is how the Rise mapping tool looks like, where we have the mapping tool in all UN languages currently integrated.
And our two countries that we've worked with Brazil and Mongolia.
Let's start with Brazil and trying to understand the vulnerability analysis of Brazil.
You can see that this is a very interesting map, how the red in this context is vulnerable and green is, let's say, not so vulnerable.
And this cursor, it changes to how it would look like in 2040 and how it is currently at the moment.
Now, you can also look at crop plant vulnerability, where we have tried to analyze how the crop plants are vulnerable because that is the scope of yes, where you can see that the colors is not so deep, which means that they're moderate to slightly vulnerable for Brazil.
And for pasture land, pasture land looks a bit more vulnerable in this context, according to this analysis.
And in the future, you see how the gradients has increased and how the red dots have increased, which means that for 2040, we see the projection and how the vulnerability has increased.
Um, we can also change the terrains and the type of layers behind just so that you can see the assessment a bit more better.
And the analysis is in pixel size, which means that you can pinpoint and understand which district, which area, which municipality are we specifically talking about.
Right.
So now let's think about what does this mean in the context of finances or investment decision.
As I mentioned, high vulnerability means low adaptive capacity, which then means there's a high need of investment right now, but there is a higher cost of investment in that area.
Medium vulnerability, moderate capacity, which means that a targeted capacity building, perhaps blended financing instrument, nature based solutions, would be a good portfolio for this particular zone.
Whereas a low vulnerability, high adaptive capacity still needs maintenance.
Just because it's green, just because it's less vulnerable doesn't mean that it cannot degrade, it still needs maintenance.
Now, I'll just explain a couple of interesting facts that I've understood about Brazil and then we come to Mongolia.
For Brazil, the interesting aspect that we saw was, for example, exposure.
This is the climate exposure chart that we have, which looks very scary.
I wanted to understand why? Why does it look so scary? The current climate stress index, you see some sparse, very high stresses, but there are the Amazonian.
You see that it is quite green, but it looks like there is some sort of gradients into play.
However, the most interesting aspect for me was was this, which is in 2040.
The 2040 map looks very scary because the low climate stress is almost vanished in the center, whereas we see that the Amazon still regulate.
Exposure is specific to temperature and precipitation, so we can already understand how this will change over the years.
Right.
So another thing that we've implemented in this mapping tool is a very dynamic dashboard that gives you the exact number of how many hectres of land or kilometers of land is vulnerable and how that has changed over the years.
How many people are affected? How does the class composition differ? What are the different hotspots and what are the different sub regions that are the most affected areas.
Now let's head to Mongolia.
Right.
For Mongolia, this is, again, the vulnerability map that we have where we see the very low, which is green to then high, which is red.
Then we have the analysis towards 2040 and the projection towards 2040.
Of course, it is increase in temperature, this increase in precipitation.
It is the dynamic climate change aspect that has changed this.
That is the cropland vulnerability of Mongolia and how that changes over the years on 2014.
And these are the different layers.
We change it to terrain to street, to see it a bit more better.
You can change the opacity according to what you're analyzing, and you can also stack different layers to see and understand.
Now, this is one of the analysis that I thought for Mongolia is very interesting.
Again, coming back to the same investment decision, which I will skip.
Sensitivity.
This is very interesting.
Sensitivity, in this case, that is the overall map.
Let's try to understand what are the different elements.
Man made pressure in Mongolia is almost very low.
Just a bit, you know, you see a bit of a yellow to orange dot around Ulambatar.
It makes sense, which means that the model is working for us.
However, if you look at the natural sensitivity, it is quite intense, which means that the natural aspect, also the climate change is the one that has a bigger play in Mongolia.
That is how we change our decision, and that is how we urge governments, investors to change their decision accordingly.
Right.
And just let's quickly look at the dashboard of Mongolia as well.
Something that I forgot to explain is we've also put in together the national commitments that different countries have, for example, how much have they committed to restore in terms of NDC, LDN bonch challenge, and then to have a holistic look at how and where investments could be first.
Right.
So that is the race mapping tool for us, and I would urge everybody to scan the tool.
It also works in your mobile phones very well.
If you want to engage with us, there is a small section with which you could engage with us.
But however, we also are here the entire day.
So if you have anything that you would want to share with us, most welcome.
And we also would want to urge other governments to join in.
This is just a small snippet of, let's say, understanding how we can, let's say, bring in this tool together.
But we want more governments, more partners to join in in our initiative.
Thank you so much.
Many thanks to both of you.
We're going to jump straight to our panel where we'll discuss from policies to implementation, country and partners experiences in addressing agricultural land and soil degradation.
So I'm delighted to welcome our panelists to the stage.
His Excellency Chish Els Surn's Director General of the livestock Department, Ministry of Fruit, Agriculture and Light Industry of Mongolia.
Please, welcome, sir.
Baba Done who's UN CCD focal point, Director at the Ministry of Environment and Ecological Transition of Senegal, welcome.
From Brazil, Marcelo Fierro, who's Secretary for Sustainable Production and Irrigation, and Luis Eduardo Pasifi Rangel, who's senior advisor for Sustainable Production Systems at Mapp.
Welcome to Both of you.
We have Andrea Lucretia Filion Cogara, UN CCD Technical focal point at Guatemala's Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources.
Hello.
Thank you.
Emmeline Fellows, Senior Director of Agriculture and Food at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
Let's give our panelists a big round of applause, please.
Why? Because we have a large panel here with us today.
So like I mentioned, welcome to all of you.
I'd like to make this session very practical and we are running behind schedule quite heavily in fact.
I'm going to ask you to be very brief in your answers, and we may have to skip the last question I intended to ask you, so thank you for your understanding.
So I'd like to ask each one of you to maybe share one successful example of agricultural land or soil restoration from your country or your organization, what made it work, and how do you think the new FAO UNCCD guidance could help us scale and sustain approaches like this.
I'd like to start with you, please, Your Excellency.
Sorry.
Good morning, everybody.
So he's going to speak Mongolian language.
First of all, it's very bad the subject we are discussing because I would like to say Mongolian.
So if you have a land and we would have a foot.
So it means like we have to love the land and we have to respected and we have to thank to we are having thanks to us.
So of course, Mongolia is really as I mentioned, presentation also indicated, most of the area is pasture lands.
And this is the best example success story if I can share is nationwide, specifically with the government.
So we are trying to protect our 30% of the time and we are not only the ticket to the protection and aside from the protection, we are going to use it as a pasture tap.
This is our success.
And we have many other examples of, for example, the provisions level.
And for example, west the western among Barb if the plant degradation is a bit severe, we try to implement increased pasteurization and the chocolate community is very happy with this work.
So like protecting the dance and increase the So this implementation, we are focusing on two main areas.
First one is the endpoint.
If you perspective then, most of the people making the decisions who is working on the docket.
So I Mongolian case, we have to be focused on how to communicate with the doc decision makers and listen to them and reflect their voice to our decision.
And the second one is to implement our decision.
So of course, the finance is the biggest issue, so we are trying to have more green financing to the doc area.
That's bars focus area too.
So of course, with the crop plan, use of Bugs last 66060 years.
So that 60 years, we have to aside from we are using said crop, we still have to protect and improve the land use.
So as the main cropland area is T and student to protect our land, we start planting the trees over this area.
Thank you.
Next, I'd like to turn to Mr.
Dion of Senegal and ask you what example you'd like to highlight and what was the critical ingredients that allowed it to succeed, please.
An example, the rest Thank you so much and hello to all my colleagues and co panels like thank you for this.
In terms of the success genres examples, we have many such examples.
I could quite a few.
I would like also to commend the cooperation with FAO, which has been very helpful and instrumental.
We've had the Parka in the peanut growing basins to restore and regenerate the agricultural land with the help of different programs and this improves the fertility of the soil and also the yield.
We also have been able to assist certain ecosystems that had been degraded and which are currently being rehabilitated.
And the major successes are the integration of the communities in the choice of the site and the species and the mobilization of the plans.
And we have an integrated planning of the use of land with a resilient and sustainable approach.
We have certain funds of agro forestry to help biodiversity also and to help to produce other byproducts, fruit and and also for medical purposes.
We have also done some capacity building to better share best practices.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Marcelo and Luis from Brazil.
Brazil obviously operates at enormous agricultural scale.
So what experience from Brazil shows us that restoring agricultural land and maintaining productive agriculture can work together.
Good morning, everyone.
This recovery of the data lens is absolutely priority of government.
Therefore, we strongly support this program hes which brings together producers, innovations, global sectors, and investments.
Brazil is very prong to combine experac and work together with each global partners and agenda.
The best part Gurnch Ps.
We present same Cocoa producing and as divided.
Aga now I want to show directors.
He demonstration Brazil actions in Sepa.
Thank you, boss.
Thank you very much for Brazil.
It's very important to receive a vice minister here to try to prove for the world that we really do in the right direction move in the right direction of the land recover and show about that.
Since 2010, we start a very important program in Brazil, smart agriculture program there.
We call RBC low agricultural carbon, and we are so proud to recover more than 37 million hectres in 15 years, 37 So it was very important Marcel and me to try to show to the world that Haz is not a new initiative, is a kind of implementation program that Brazil could be a benchmark for the world.
Of course, you know about our map.
We are huge.
We have different biomes.
We have different pressures of the degradation land.
And agriculture in Brazil is very important for our balance.
More than 25% of our GDP comes from agriculture.
So we need to take care about our soils.
And how can we do that? Science based solutions.
We need to bring some science for these decisions and we do that.
We did that since 2010 and after that, we grow every year to our ambitions and our targets to recover lands.
When we come to any conventions for FAU for the United Nations, you need to share.
This is a place to share knowledge, to share information.
So that's why we launched last year in the Cp 30, our great initiative with HIS and HIS not about different pieces of this disposal.
We need to think about that.
We start with the low agriculture carbon strategy in the beginning.
We cross in this 15 years.
Another strategy is this Brazilian greenwaym Brazil.
This is a very important policy in Brazil and this totally connect with the proposition of highest.
Brazil have some solutions.
Highest is a kind of amplification for the world.
How can you guys need to customize, needs to tailor the solutions for your specific reality? We are so proud about our experience and, of course, our vast ministry show that we are very huge commitment in this agenda of the and Berg Government W.
Well, thank you very much for sharing that successful example.
Andrea, yes.
Let's have a round of applause, please.
Andrea from Guatemala, we're curious to find out how you have been able to translate national policy into action and most of all, to be able to do it at the landscape or community level, which is very important, indeed.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to share.
In our country for the past myself as my experience, I can share as the Director of climate change and both focal points for both conventions from UNFAC and UNCCD, we realized a couple of years ago that all of our national instruments were not really aligned.
And this was an issue because we were doing different efforts in different directions rather than funneling them with a little resources that we have into the same goals and actions.
So we did this whole upgrade and update of the whole instrument on national level size on the climate change and the land degradation information too.
So for the past 2.5 years, we've been working very hard on all of our data.
And making sure that our indicators make sense because we were having different information from different institutions, organizations, and they were not really matching.
So on the ground that didn't make sense.
Maybe we had numbers on documents like it was before, but those were not being useful for implementing on the ground.
So as a first step, it was very important to align our policy and our decisions to the science behind it.
So that was a very, very important exercise still going on because there's a lot of work to do.
But that was, I think, a milestone for the country to do that swift between what we were doing and how we're aiming to do it now.
So data is crucial and this kind of tools and guidance that we're getting now and the FAO, who has been helping us with that has been key for that very, very important step into making that change as a country.
And then to get into the well, actually to the people who need it the most, which is on the territories, we do implement several projects.
We have different projects that are focused on drought mostly because it is one of our hardest impacts from climate change and degradation.
And most of those projects are coming from international cooperation.
That's also been, um, important exercise for us to be very adequate on our data as well because we want to make sure that we have results and we can make sure that those actions implemented in the ground make sense into the future, especially for adaptation mechanisms that we're applying because you cannot see those results within a day or two or a year or two.
Those are results in the long term.
So we have to make sure our baseline now makes sense.
So when we go back and check on that to make sure that the programs are working, we have data that is real and makes sense for the people in the ground.
So yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Andrea, for your very valuable insights.
Emmeline, now you bring in the embodied voice of business here on this panel.
It's very important.
Indeed, it's crucial to engage the private sector.
What are companies learning about what makes soil health intervention scalable across the full agricultural value chains.
Thank you so much for that question and for helping me working.
I'll show that.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me here.
My name is Emmeline, I represent the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.
We were mandated by the UCCD Secretariat to conduct some consultations with the private sector to inform policymakers on how to unlock co investments.
I come with that perspective, and I'm really inspired by what I've seen this week across the different domes and avenues where a lot of different tools are being developed, which you saw two today that are really fascinating to try and bring the data to the policymakers and the decision makers.
But also other stakeholders whose contributions are going to be critical.
And so the question I'm asking myself is, okay, we have fantastic tools that are being developed, which obviously we're missing.
We needed that data a year that the knowledge on soil data is still not very high, so hopefully these tools will help everybody to better understand, to make better informed decisions.
But we also have amazing examples all over the world of some of the landscape interventions that have delivered progress.
And yet, when I looked at the presentation from Beth, the state of the soil is not improving all over the world.
So what is blocking that? I can share an example of something that is working.
The question is going to be how do we all work together to scale this up? That is not just another example of one intervention, but rather really leads to fundamental changes so that we can really scale this.
WBCSD together with PCG and the CP 28 presidency launched at COP 28, the action agenda on Regenerative landscapes, which acts as a delivery mechanism for the CP 16 RID action agenda.
What this is is a model of multi stakeholder action.
It has four layers which we think are actually critical for any intervention to work.
The first is convening.
How do you bring people together? Everyone is active on different little projects in one farm or a couple of farms or on the forest.
But how do we start linking this up at the landscape level and bringing together these efforts? Next to convening, it's indeed mapping, understanding where are these efforts? Where is the potential as the rise to this showing, where is there potential for real impact and actually return on investment, economic, long term viability.
And finally, showcasing those examples, but so that people can take them and replicate them.
I'll just say that as one of those examples, there is a number of accelerators.
We have one in Brazil in partnership with a lot of different organizations and companies in collaboration with MAPA, which really has the intention to bring $5 billion into restoration regeneration by 2030.
But again, to make that happen, we need to get people to work together and to unlock investment models and supportive policies, which would be the next stage of my intervention if we have time.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Emily.
Sadly, no, we do not have time.
Can I just say then, we just published a set of recommendations for policymakers as mandated by UNCCD Secretariat, which are the recommendations by the private sector on how to unlock private sector finance.
These are simple, there are three.
We need coherence and long term policies.
We heard it from the intervention from the previous panelists.
It can't be changes of policies every year, and it can't be one subsidy that goes in one direction and one other subsidy scheme that goes in the other.
We need coherence and long term vision.
Second, we need to look into those co investment models.
And lastly, really important is how do we simplify and strengthen the reporting and disclosure and the way the policy frameworks are helping everybody to deliver.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I just want to double check whether there's another session happening here at 10:30.
It's the case, which means that we do have to wrap up indeed, but not without thanking our wonderful panelists here first for their very helpful insights and pointers for this very important discussion on land restoration.
Many thanks to all of you.
Thank you.
And many thanks, of course, to FAO, UNCCD, all our speakers and partners, and to all of you joining us here for the opening session of Food Systems and Soil Health Day.
Thank you and enjoy the rest of your day.
And CP 17, of course, thank you.