One Year of “Trigger Change!”: Growing a Global Community for Sustainable Agriculture

Author: Ian Munene, intern, G20 Global Land Initiative / UNCCD | September 10, 2025

Photo credit: UNCCD/G20 Global Land Initiative

In July 2024, the G20 Global Land Initiative launched Trigger Change! Innovative Sustainable Agriculture Solutions for Land Restoration. This free, peer-reviewed university-level course is designed to equip the next generation of educators and practitioners with tools to restore degraded lands. One year later, the course has reached hundreds of institutions worldwide and is already transforming teaching practices.

From Launch to Global Reach

The course was developed in collaboration with agriculture universities and research institutions across the world. Intended as a three-credit Bachelor’s or Master’s-level module, it is freely available for download in English, Spanish, and Arabic.

The course has been downloaded over 1,200 times, of which around half of the downloads are from universities, colleges and research institutions from around the world.

The largest uptake is from India, Nigeria, Ecuador, Indonesia and Kenya, reflecting strong interest from regions facing urgent land management challenges.

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Empowering Educators

A core part of the course’s success is the Training of Instructors programme.

Over the past year, the G20 GLI hosted five online workshops and one in-person workshop in Hyderabad, India. Together, these sessions trained 368 educators and professionals, offering not just theory, but also hands-on methods, such as role-playing and real-world project design.

Participants praised these interactive elements for making the learning more practical and directly applicable in their classrooms and communities.

Building a Community of Practice

But learning does not end when the workshops do.

Educators remain connected through active WhatsApp groups and the Land Restoration Practitioners Network on LinkedIn. More than 540 professionals now use these platforms to share updates, exchange teaching resources, and collaborate across borders. Here is how you can join:

Evidence of Impact

The one-year post-launch survey of course participants provides clear signs of impact:

5% of the educators have already included parts of the course in their teaching.
Nearly half (47.5%) are teaching or preparing to teach the entire course.
3% found the Training of Instructors workshops useful in supporting course delivery.

Educators also expressed a desire for expanded field-based components, more translations to reach new audiences, and additional in-person sessions.

Looking Ahead

With strong uptake in its first year, Trigger Change! is on track to help embed sustainable agriculture and land restoration in the land-related curricula of training institutions around the globe.

The G20 GLI team is working to expand its reach through additional translations, richer practical content, and annual educator gatherings to strengthen global collaboration.

As one survey respondent put it, “This material is helping me inspire the change we want to see — if more training is provided, the impact will be even greater.”

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Want to learn more?

Access our second course: “Trigger Change! Innovations in Sustainable Urban Land Restoration”, launched in May 2025.

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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.

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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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