Faith4Land Week: Faith Leaders Unite for Land Restoration

Author: Gopal Patel, UNCCD/G20 GLI Faith Engagement Policy Consultant | November 27, 2025

Photo credit: UNCCD/G20 Global Land Initiative

Faith4Land Week brought together faith leaders, restoration practitioners and environmental advocates from around the world for two landmark virtual sessions, launching a new chapter in faith-led land restoration on the road to UNCCD COP17 in Mongolia.

Faith4Land Faith Leaders Gathering

The week opened with the Faith4Land Faith Leaders Gathering held on 25 November, hosted by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification-G20 Global Land Initiative. This session launched “Engaging Faith Groups on Land Restoration,” a comprehensive stocktake report revealing both the enormous potential and persistent challenges facing faith communities in environmental stewardship.

The findings tell a compelling story. Faith communities steward 8 per cent of the world’s habitable land and operate 50 per cent of global educational institutions. Yet the stocktake, drawing from its engagement with over 100 faith-led organizations throughout 2024, uncovers a striking paradox: while nearly all faith organizations (92 per cent) express strong commitment to restoration work, they consistently face barriers in accessing funding and technical expertise.

The 90-minute gathering brought together representatives from Al-Mizan, Nepal Buddhist Federation, Brahma Kumaris and others to examine successful initiatives and explore how faith traditions across the world are driving real impact in land restoration and resilience.

“Faith communities have maintained sacred relationships with land for millennia,” reflected Charles McNeill of the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative. “This stocktake demonstrates how traditional stewardship wisdom can inform modern restoration science at precisely the moment when both are most needed.”

Kamran Shezad from Bahu Trust and drafting team member of Al-Mizan shared practical insights: “Our experience shows that when faith communities partner with the right organisations and receive funding that supports their values-based approaches, they can deliver outstanding restoration results while strengthening community resilience.”

Dr. Ananya S. Rao of the Heartfulness Institute connected inner and outer transformation: “Restoration of the earth begins with restoration of the human heart – through simplicity, purity, and mindful living that allows us to give more than we take. When we align our inner state with nature, our everyday choices become acts of giving that help heal the planet.”

Faith4Land Virtual Masterclass

The stocktake findings reveal a critical implementation gap: 74 per cent of (or 3 out of every four) faith organizations are already actively engaged in restoration work, yet most face significant gaps in technical capacity and systematic approaches. Only 28 per cent (about one b every four) have formal restoration policies and 84 per cent specifically requested technical training support.

Responding directly to this need, the Faith4Land Virtual Masterclass took place on 26 November, co-led by World Wildlife Funds’ Beliefs & Values Programme and Trillion Trees, to provide hands-on guidance for planning and implementing faith-led restoration initiatives.

This practical capacity-building session moved beyond inspiration to implementation, equipping participants with frameworks drawn from the “Tree Growing for Conservation and Ecosystem Restoration” guide developed specifically for faith-based actors.

Participants explored proven approaches to planning, partnership-building and long-term stewardship that honor both ecological science and spiritual values through case studies from Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal and Tanzania, and the Atlantic Forest that spans several countries in Latin America.

Chantal Elkin of WWF emphasized the strategic timing of scaling restoration efforts led by faith-based organizations: “With UNCCD COP17 approaching and the G20 Global Land Initiative targeting 50 per cent reduction in degraded land by 2040, faith communities represent an essential, and historically under-represented, force for environmental transformation.”

New Resources for Faith-Led Restoration

Faith4Land Week also marked the launch of a dedicated Faith4Land section on the Global Restoration Information Hub. This comprehensive resource platform brings together:

Case studies from faith communities worldwide
Best practices in restoration
Land stewardship data
A commitments tracker to follow faith-led restoration pledges
Training materials
Curated knowledge resources

These resources are designed to support faith actors at every stage of their restoration journey, ensuring the momentum from Faith4Land Week continues to grow.

Looking Ahead to COP17

As we approach UNCCD COP17 in Mongolia, faith communities are positioned not just as critical partners in restoration but as leaders whose wisdom and long-term stewardship traditions offer essential guidance for healing our relationship with the land.

Director's Message

The year 2024 was pivotal for the Global Land Initiative. Land degradation and restoration remained prominent on the global policy agenda throughout.

The UN Environmental Assembly, G7 Leaders’ Summit, G20 Environment and Climate Change Ministers’ meeting, and BRICS Leaders’ Summit addressed land degradation and committed to scaling up land restoration efforts.

The European Union passed a new Restoration Law mandating quantitative targets for land restoration. The UNFCCC, UNCBD and UNCCD Conferences of the Parties (COPs), held during the last quarter of the year, reinforced land restoration as a crucial solution to combat land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change.

Building on this favorable policy momentum, the Global Land Initiative continued to develop and deliver a robust program. In collaboration with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), we completed a database on Global Restoration Commitments by countries under the UNCCD, UNCBD, UNFCCC and the Bonn Challenge.

Representing a significant increase in global commitments since 2021, the total global commitment now stands at 1.2 billion hectares, with 30 countries, including 11 G20 members, pledging to restore over 10 million hectares each.

The UNCCD, with financial support from the Global Land Initiative, published the first global restoration economy international report, titled, Investing in Land’s Future: Financial needs assessment for UNCCD. The report defines the private sector’s growing role in land restoration and its potential for creating green jobs.

The study outlines key recommendations to support the growth of the restoration economy, which has an associated market survey valued at $37 billion globally, growing at 8.2% annually and is projected to reach $70 billion by 2031. Together, these studies stressed the need for focused policy action to encourage private sector investment and engagement in the restoration economy.

Working with the International Trade Centre (ITC), the Global Land Initiative launched the first cohort of the “Global Ecopreneurs Program,” training 100 young entrepreneurs from restoration startups. These entrepreneurs received training on improving business plans and pitching to investors. We plan to scale this program regionally to reach 10,000 ecopreneurs by 2029.

Training remained a cornerstone of the Global Land Initiative, with programs on the restoration of mining areas, of urban lands, of lowland-based systems, of drylands and with biosaline agriculture. These trainings consistently attracted more applications than available slots. To accommodate this high demand and broader participation, we also conducted online webinars on these topics, in English, Arabic and French.

The first University Curriculum Course on Sustainable Agriculture for Land Restoration was launched this year. It reached over 400 university teachers, with over 100 trained on implementing the curriculum. A university module on urban land restoration is in its final stages.

Representatives from 25 countries attended the second Global Changemaker Academy for Parliamentarians held in Bonn. With the European Union Restoration Law’s passage, global best practices can now be discussed and adapted to national contexts.

The Global Land Initiative’s visibility surged with participation in the G20 Environment and Climate Change Working Group meetings in Brazil, the COPs of the UNCBD and UNCCD and 7 other international exhibitions. In December, the Initiative, in partnership with Germany’s Federal Museum of Arts and Sciences, opened the Save Land: United for Land Museum Exhibition, the first museum exhibition on land restoration, which will run until June 2025.

Online engagement grew, reaching over 35,000 newsletter subscribers and over 14,000 followers across social media platforms, and a global reach of nearly 400,000. The Global Photography Festival, which attracted 17,000 entries from 154 countries, further boosted visibility.

The Global Restoration Information Hub was launched in July 2024. It is a compilation of globally available data on land restoration from credible sources. The site provides information on global best practices, restoration commitments, best practice legislations, documentaries, restoration actors and other databases.

The Initiative issued a global call for communities and NGOs to submit their restoration projects for small grant support, receiving over 600 submissions from 100 countries. Forty-one projects from XX countries were selected for funding.

[Statement on faith, if the faith report is finalized]

The G20 Global Land Initiative Steering Committee was kept informed of developments through regular communication. It met in July and continues to provide guidance on program implementation. It received the work plan for 2025-26; an exciting period of action is ahead.

Executive Director's Message

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