COP16 urges private sector to restore degraded land and battle drought

Negotiators at the United Nations summit on land degradation and desertification, or COP16, are calling on the global business community to do its part to protect the health of the world’s land. The two-week conference, which kicked off Dec. 2, has explored approaches for how the private sector can promote and implement sustainable land practices across business operations, such as introducing better land and water management policies and financing nature-based solutions that protect and conserve the environment. Land loss and drought could have major consequences not just for biodiversity and the climate, but for people’s livelihoods and big businesses too. The global economy could lose $23 trillion by 2050 due to land degradation, though halting this trend would cost $4.6 trillion, according to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, or UNCCD. Up to 40% of the world’s land is already degraded — which makes it unusable for economic or agricultural purposes — and that figure is set to increase as the frequency of droughts surges. To reduce the risk of businesses pushing land beyond planetary limits, negotiators at the COP16 summit in Riyadh appealed to the private sector to be more transparent by disclosing operations that could have land-related impacts on nature and food systems. COP16 saw more private-sector participation than any previous UNCCD summit. Last week it featured a daylong Business 4 Land Forum that brought together some 400 CEOs and executives from land- and water-intensive industries, such as the agrifood, textile, energy, and other sectors. Businesses need to make profits, according to Swiss businessman André Hoffmann, but it should be through investments such as biodiversity credits. “We are all part of the public, and some of us have been more successful at using public resources for private wealth,” said Hoffmann, who has spent years making the case for nature in business circles. “If in your business plan you have to abuse part of the planet then you are not going to be able to do that for a very long time. The externality you create will come back and hit you,” said Hoffman, a member of the high-level advisory committee of COP16 and the vice chairman of the global pharmaceutical company Roche Holding Ltd. UNCCD launched the Business 4 Land initiative, or B4L, earlier this year in Davos, Switzerland, with InTent, a business lobby group aimed at engaging and supporting the private sector in sustainable land management. Hoffmann is InTent’s founder. Agrifood systems — and particularly industrial agriculture — have been under scrutiny for overusing agrochemicals and generous government subsidies that fuel land degradation, which in turn destroys livelihoods, economies, and the ability to produce food. In the past few years, global leaders have called on the private sector to contribute more to land resilience and drought restoration after a UNCCD report found that it contributes only 6% of financial commitments to the area. “Through our Presidency of COP16 we will work to make this COP a launchpad to strengthen public and private partnerships and create a roadmap to rehabilitate 1.5 billion hectares of land by 2030,” said COP16 President Abdulrahman Abdulmohsen AlFadley, who is also Saudi Arabia’s minister of environment, water, and agriculture, in a statement. This is the remaining share of the world’s agriculture systems that can be restored for the world to continue producing healthy foods along with clean water and air, according to UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw. “We are talking about land and drought but what it means, really, is food and nutrition security. We are losing healthy soils as the productive side of food due to unsustainable agriculture. Yet we need to produce as much food as we produce today by mid-century to feed a growing population and middle class,” Thiaw told Devex. Saudi Arabia as the COP16 host launched the Riyadh Action Agenda, its landmark initiative to cement new public-private partnerships to accelerate land restoration and resilience with a focus on agrifood systems. Saudi Arabia’s climate envoy, Adel al-Jubeir, said public-private partnerships in land restoration promise huge returns for businesses and ensure social, political, and economic stability. “Investing in land restoration is extremely profitable. The private sector can unlock untapped capital flows through nature-based solutions but the choice to invest is up to them,” said al-Jubeir, who is also Saudi Arabia’s minister of state for foreign affairs. Much of the investments comprising the private sector’s 6% share in drought resilience and land restoration are linked to corporate social responsibility initiatives, said Louise Baker, the managing director of global mechanism at UNCCD. She described this as “a strategic mistake in the sense that land is very much part of the business decision-making.” “Serious industrial sectors that grow food, feed, and fiber need access to land and water to be able to operate. It has taken long for the private sector to realize that this is not a CSR investment, but an investment in the future of their business. We are talking as well on investing with a rate of return. It is not just some sort of charity contribution,” said Baker in a media briefing prior to the conference. COP16 has explored solutions on how the private sector can do more — such as investing in green bonds, green labels, private equity, carbon markets, and biodiversity credits — to meet the $355 annual billions UNCCD estimates is needed for international land restoration by 2030 For instance, funding commitments are flowing in to support the Africa Great Green Wall land restoration initiative, which is backed by the U.N. and expected to unlock billions of dollars in carbon credits by expanding from the Sahel region to other parts of the continent. Italy announced a new pledge of 11 million euros, and the Food and Agriculture Organization said it has submitted a funding proposal to the Green Climate Fund of $250 million to support the Africa Great Green Wall Initiative. Austria pledged 3.6 million euros. The U.N. Development Programme’s Marcos Athias Neto said the private sector can achieve long-term investments through integrity in carbon credits. But there is a limit to what they can extract from nature. “A conversation is beginning here in Riyadh but it should be carried forward through this convention that the degrader needs to pay for the restoration, just like the principal of the polluters must pay in climate change conversations,” Neto said. Highlighting food systems Agrifood systems contribute to 80% of deforestation and 70% of freshwater extraction, according to the UNCCD. Agriculture also accounts for 23% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Agrifood systems harm healthy lands in multiple ways, including killing off microorganisms that add fertility to soil. The overuse of fossil fuel products and agrochemicals also pollutes water and air streams, said Hakim Baliraine, the chairperson of the Eastern and Southern African Small Scale Farmers Forum region network. “Desertification is attributed to soil mismanagement. The key lead factor to soil degradation has been attributed to unsustainable means of farming and one of them is industrial agriculture which uses fossil fuels and agrochemicals,” Baliraine said. But that can be remedied in terms of carbon sequestration, water regulation, habitat creation, and nutrient recycling, according to Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “There is so much at stake and there is a cost for breaching planetary boundaries. The transitions that have been brought by unsustainable agriculture can be managed and take us back towards healthy land systems,” said Rockström.