About Us

For the first time, UNCCD has a dedicated pavilion focused on restoration. It features 150 speakers, 66 partners, 43 side events, 28 cutting-edge innovations, 4 fireside chats, 4 product launches, the first AI generated movie about land restoration, a virtual museum exhibition and a game. The United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration stand will also be hosted in the Pavilion. All events presented in the pavilion will be livestreamed, except the movie screenings.

The Restoration Pavilion is not just about communicating technical ideas and scientific findings in novel ways. The Restoration Pavilion is a vibrant space where passion meets the restoration challenge to inspire big, bold and engaging ideas from the changemakers, visionaries and forward thinkers that are taking land restoration to scale.

The Pavilion is hosted by UNCCD’s G20 Global Land Initiative (G20 GLI), whose ambition is to scale land restoration globally in all terrestrial ecosystems to achieve a 50 percent reduction in degraded land by 2040.

Established in 2020 by G20 Countries during the Saudi Presidency, G20 GLI collaborates with the restoration community to showcase best practices and build capacity, and empower civil society and engage the private sector. It is radar-focused on five restoration challenges: legislation, finance, human resource capacity, land tenure and a restoration economy/industry.

Join the events in person, virtually or through social.

In person: UNCCD COP16 Blue Zone

Livestream: @g20land initiative YouTube channel or via Zoom: register for individual events here:

Follow us on Social: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X_Arabic and YouTube.

Hashtags: #RestorationPavilion, #LandIsLife, #UNCCD COP16

Ambition

By 2030, an estimated 1.5 billion hectares of land, an area one and a half times the size of the United States, needs to be restored to recover degraded areas to keep healthy land in balance.

But more needs to be done to keep both people and the planet resilient considering the growing climate change threats, including the destruction of ecosystems and the loss of biological diversity.

Visionary leaders, passionate activists, citizen and data-driven scientist as well as solutions-driven innovators and changemakers are uniting around one ambition: to scale land restoration by restoring degraded lands in all ecosystems to achieve a 50 percent reduction in degraded land by 2040.

The events at the Restoration Pavilion will be livestreamed. Tune in from anywhere in the world or register online to be part of the conversation. Absence does not equate to silence, so don’t miss out! Join, share your ideas and be part of the conversation!

Events

There is an exciting array of speakers and event formats for everyone – from panels and fireside chats to roundtables and virtual conversations. International and national governments, public and private sectors as well as non-governmental organizations and celebrities uniting to answer the call to restore degraded lands. Plan your Restoration Pavilion experience now using the calendar!

Product Launches

New reports and innovations will be launched at the Restoration Pavilion. They include:

A report on the status of restoration commitments to be published by the International Union for Nature Conservation
The Youth Consultation Report: Regreening Africa, published by the Global Landscapes Forum.

Round Table

Faith communities are developing a 15-year G20 GLI engagement plan for land restoration. This 90-minute roundtable session is the last opportunity for faith leaders and interested parties to refine and enhance the draft 2025-2040 Faith Engagement Plan. The consultation aims is to ensure plan fully captures the unique strengths and diverse perspectives of faith traditions in addressing land degradation, adding to the inputs gathered through extensive consultations in the last several months.

Save land: United for Land Museum Exhibition

UNCCD-G20 GLI, together with the Bundeskunsthalle (Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany), will on 5 December 2024 open a Museum Exhibition titled, Save Land: United for Land, which will run for six months. Take a tour of the Virtual Museum Exhibition through this link from 5 December 2025.

United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Enjoy an immersive experience of mountain gorilla’s in Uganda at the United Nations Decade and Ecosystem Restoration stand in the Pavilion.

Restoration Pavilion

COP16

About the Restoration Pavilion

UNCCD COP16

Host country COP16

G20 GLI

About G20

Implementation Strategy

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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