FORUM : “United for Land: Our Legacy. Our Future.” International Day to combat Desertification and Drought 2024. This year, the theme will spotlight the future of land stewardship — our most precious resource to ensure the stability and prosperity of billions of people around the world. Healthy land not only provides us with almost 95% of our food but so much more: it clothes and shelters us, provides jobs and livelihoods, and protects us from the worsening droughts, floods and wildfires.Yet, every second, an equivalent of four football fields of healthy land becomes degraded, adding up to a total of 100 million hectares each year. Growing word populations, coupled with unsustainable production and consumption patterns, fuel demand for natural resources, putting excessive pressure on land to the point of degradation. Desertification and drought are driving forced migration, putting tens of millions of people each year at risk of displacement. Of the world’s 8 billion inhabitants, over one billion of young people under the age of 25 years live in developing countries, particularly in regions directly dependent on land and natural resources for sustenance. Creating job prospects for rural populations is a viable solution that gives young people access to eco-entrepreneurship opportunities and at the same time to scale up best practices. Each USD invested in land restoration can yield up to 30 USD in return. Follow the conversation with the hashtags: #DesertificationAndDrought, #Drought, #ourlegacyourfuture, #United4land, #17june, #DesertificationDay.
FORUM: “Land restoration, desertification, and drought resilience.” World Environment Day 2024.The theme in 2024 focuses on land restoration among others to address the triple planetary crisis: the crisis of climate change, the crisis of nature and biodiversity loss, and the crisis of pollution and waste. Since its first celebration in 1973, World Environment Day has been an occasion to raise awareness on environmental problems and to call for collaborative action across actors around the world. The 2024 edition will focus on land restoration, desertification and drought resilience, under the slogan “Our Land. Our Future". We are #GenerationRestoration”, as the year marks the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Today, the future of our land is on the line. According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, up to 40 per cent of the planet’s land is degraded, directly affecting half of the world’s population and threatening roughly half of global GDP (US$44 trillion). The number and duration of droughts has increased by 29 per cent since 2000 – without urgent action, droughts may affect over three-quarters of the world’s population by 2050. Land restoration is a key pillar of the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), a rallying call for the protection and revival of ecosystems all around the world, which is critical to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. This year, the sixteenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP16) of the UNCCD will also take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from 2 to 13 December 2024. At UNCCD COP16, the world will come together to aim towards scaling up ambition and investment to restore 1.5 billion hectares of degraded lands by 2030, to have a collective agreement on how to tackle worsening droughts, to feed growing populations without converting more land or depleting our soils, and to deliver secure land rights for all in all parts of the world.
The theme of this year’s World Environment Day is “land restoration, desertification, and drought resilience.”
Humanity depends on land. Yet, all over the world, a toxic cocktail of pollution, climate chaos, and biodiversity decimation are turning healthy lands into deserts, and thriving ecosystems into dead zones. They are annihilating forests and grasslands, and sapping the strength of land to support ecosystems, agriculture, and communities.
That means crops failing, water sources vanishing, economies weakened, and communities endangered – with the poorest hit hardest. Sustainable development is suffering. And we are trapped in a deadly cycle – land use is responsible for eleven percent of the carbon dioxide emissions heating our planet. It’s time to break free.
Countries must deliver on all their commitments to restore degraded ecosystems and land, and on the entire Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. They must use their new national climate action plans to set out how they will halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. And we must drastically scale-up finance to support developing countries to adapt to violent weather, protect nature, and support sustainable development.
Inaction is too costly. But swift and effective action makes economic sense. Every dollar invested in ecosystem restoration creates up to thirty dollars in economic benefits.
We are Generation Restoration. Together, let’s build a sustainable future for land, and for humanity.
And later this year, the three Rio Conventions – the one on climate, the one on biodiversity and the one on desertification – are each holding a Conference of Parties or COP to push further the ambitions of these conventions.
Land restoration can be a golden thread that ties these together, ties together action and ambition across all these three important gatherings.
So we must make this work count.
I thank the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for hosting World Environment Day 2024.
On this important day, I ask everyone to join Generation Restoration.
Our land is our future.
And we must protect it.
UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen.
EVENT: Join UNEP's official online World Environment Day celebration:
Let's come together for a film screening of the short documentary Kiss the Ground and learn about a solution to climate change that is right under our feet: land restoration. The screening is followed by a discussion between Xiye Bastida (climate justice activist), Ayadi Mishra (UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration Advisory Board member), Bruno Pozzi (UNEP's Deputy Director of the Ecosystems Division), Finian Makepeace (filmmaker Kiss the Ground) and Kartik Verma (representatives from the Children and Youth Major Group to UNEP). Register here.
On World Environment Day, UN Secretary-General Guterres will deliver a pivotal speech at the American Museum of Natural History with opening remarks by UN Special Envoy Michael R. Bloomberg and Museum President Sean M. Decatur
The UN Secretary-General António Guterres will set out some hard-hitting truths about the state of the climate, the grotesque risk leaders are running, and what companies and countries – particularly the G7 and the G20 – need to do over the next eighteen months to salvage humanity’s chances of a livable future. The Secretary-General will also share new data from the World Meteorological Organization and the Copernicus Climate Change Service. The Secretary-General will be joined by Michael R. Bloomberg, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions and Sean M. Decatur, President of the American Museum of Natural History.
WHAT: A SPECIAL ADDRESS ON CLIMATE ACTION
WHO: - António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General - Michael R. Bloomberg, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Climate Ambition and Solutions - Sean M. Decatur, President of the American Museum of Natural History - Femi Oke, Independent Journalist; Co-Founder, Moderate The Panel
FAO, with the support of partner will celebrate the World Environment Day (WED) on Wednesday, 05 June 2024 from 13:00 to 15:00 hrs ICT (GMT+7).The relevance of restoring at least 100 million ha of landscapes through the RESULT ASIA (Restoring and Sustaining Landscapes Together Asia: A Regional Programmatic Framework for Forest and Landscape Restoration) via better coordination and collaboration will be discussed to address these crises. As a shining example of forest and landscape restoration and investor in innovative restoration solutions, the Korea Forest Service (KFS) along with partners will showcase the significance of promoting restoration and related value chains through innovations in the Asia and the Pacific region. The event will also see the launch of an information brief on the topic of sustainable wood supply and restoration in Asia and the Pacific.
As a global hub for environmental governance, Geneva plays an important role in the global response to desertification, land degradation, and drought (DLDD). With leading organizations on environmental issues, nature conservation, water, health, human rights and many relevant areas of work, Geneva hosts a strong expertise to contribute to global processes tackling DLDD. From addressing the impacts and preventing the risks posed by this crisis on people and the planet to developing policies to halt DLDD, stakeholders from Geneva also play a role in making links to address other environmental crises. Leading diplomats and international experts taking the floor at this event will highlight how international Geneva multilateral diplomacy system, with its numerous intergovernmental organizations, permanent governmental missions, NGOs, platforms, academic institutions, and other stakeholders, is engaged in the upcoming UNCCD COP16 and how it is actively tackling desertification, land degradation, and drought.
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