Empower Civil Society

Empowering Civil Society by Engagement and Advocacy

The G20 Global Land Initiative empowers civil society through a variety of activities. It offers restoration grants, supports citizen science, and ensures inclusive consultations with range of stakeholders. These include non-governmental organizations, women’s and youth groups, land professionals, faith organizations and Indigenous Peoples. Outputs include increased community-led restoration projects, public awareness campaigns, and sharing of good practices. These lead to outcomes like stronger land stewardship, improved livelihoods and progress toward halving global land degradation by 2040T.

How we are empowering civil society

Small Grants

he project provides support to civil society organizations that are implementing restoration activities in their communities. In 2024, nearly 700 applications were received from 100 countries and 39 organizations were selected to receive between $5,000 to $15,000 each in funding.

Engaging women in land restoration

GLI empowers women-led groups in land professions to advocate for restoration, building capacity through webinars, courses, and events to influence policy and form strategic partnerships.

Working with faith groups

Faith leaders play a vital role in mobilizing communities for land restoration through shared values, advocacy, and collaboration. By fostering interfaith partnerships, aligning policy priorities, and exchanging knowledge, faith networks help scale environmental action. This effort aims to reach one billion people and link 10,000 institutions globally by 2040.

Mobilizing youth

Engaging youth through creative and values-driven approaches helps inspire a new generation of land stewards. By connecting restoration with purpose, opportunity, and digital storytelling, young people are empowered to see land as a source of both meaning and livelihood. This initiative aims to engage one billion people on social media by 2040.

Honoring land wisdom

Rooting land restoration in Indigenous knowledge and spiritual connection fosters deeper, more holistic stewardship of nature. Honoring traditional practices and sacred relationships with the land strengthens restoration efforts and nurtures a sense of shared responsibility. This initiative aims to network one million practitioners and train 1,000 future leaders by 2040.

RestorLife Awards

Restor was created to empower restoration practitioners with data and connectivity for greater impact. The response has been incredible—since applications closed for the first RestorLife Awards, we’ve explored 1,127 entries, including 810 for the NGO Award and 316 for the Responsible Business Leadership Award.

See it in motion

Explore

Roundtable on Gender Issues in Post-mining Land Restoration

Inviting Faith-based Organizations to Lead Land Restoration

Global Youth Kindness Conference

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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