- AfDB Says Land Restoration Must Become Development and Security Priority for Africa
The African Development Bank is pressing for greater investment in land restoration across Africa’s fragile and conflict-affected regions, arguing that reversing environmental degradation should be treated not only as a climate objective but as an instrument for strengthening food security, livelihoods and political stability.
The call comes as the seventeenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, COP17, gets underway in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, bringing together more than 12,000 representatives from the Convention’s 197 Parties.
Held under the theme “Restoring Land. Restoring Hope.”, the conference is focused on accelerating global efforts to tackle desertification, land degradation and drought while converting existing international commitments into measurable action.
The continent contains a significant concentration of fragile and conflict-affected states where deteriorating land, water scarcity, declining agricultural productivity and climate shocks can interact with poverty and weak institutions to intensify economic and social pressures.
Representing the AfDB at COP17, Al Hamndou Dorsouma, Division Manager for Climate and Green Growth, said land restoration should therefore be viewed as part of a wider peace and development agenda.
“Sub-Saharan Africa is home to nearly half of the world’s fragile and conflict-affected settings,” he said.
“For Africa, land restoration is a way of promoting peace and stability, an opportunity to build resilience and to address the underlying drivers of fragility before they evolve into larger conflicts.”
Land degradation can reduce agricultural yields, undermine rural incomes and increase pressure on already scarce natural resources. In economies where substantial populations depend directly on agriculture and livestock, deterioration in the productive capacity of land can quickly translate into lower household incomes, food insecurity and migration.
Where those pressures interact with political instability or weak state capacity, environmental stress can become an additional source of fragility.
The AfDB is consequently advocating financing models capable of sustaining restoration projects in environments where conventional private capital may be reluctant to operate because of elevated political, security and commercial risks.
On the opening day of COP17, the Bank participated in a side event on “Unlocking Land Restoration Financing for Resilience and Stability in Fragile and Conflict-affected Settings,” organised with the UNCCD, United Nations Environment Programme and United Nations Development Programme.
The discussions focused on financing instruments that could improve coordination, risk-sharing and continuity of funding in fragile environments.
Participants also introduced a proposed Fragility Financing Mechanism intended to help move restoration projects away from episodic financing towards more predictable long-term support.
UNCCD Executive Secretary Yasmine Fouad said the emphasis of the conference must now move from declarations towards implementation.
“COP17 must be a COP of implementation. The challenge now is delivery. We need to move from commitments to measurable results on the ground,” she said.
That implementation gap has become one of the central challenges confronting international climate and environmental finance.
Restoration projects often produce benefits over long periods, while investors may demand returns over significantly shorter horizons. The commercial value of healthier ecosystems, improved soil quality and greater drought resilience can also be difficult to monetise directly.
This makes public and development finance particularly important in absorbing early-stage risk and creating conditions under which private capital can eventually participate.
The AfDB has already used its Transition Support Facility to finance projects in fragile environments since 2008.
Among the examples cited by the Bank is a US$9.5 million project aimed at restoring the ecological and economic functions of Lake Chad, an area where environmental deterioration has intersected with poverty, displacement and insecurity.
The Bank has also supported a large-scale programme to strengthen climate resilience, food security and livelihoods in the Horn of Africa.
These interventions illustrate the AfDB’s broader argument that environmental investment can generate economic and security benefits simultaneously.
Restored agricultural land can increase production and household income. Improved water management can reduce vulnerability to drought. Stronger ecosystems can support employment, livestock production and rural enterprise while reducing competition over increasingly scarce resources.
That makes land restoration potentially relevant not only to environmental ministries but also to finance, agriculture, infrastructure and security policymakers.
The host country itself illustrates the scale of the global challenge. Mongolia covers about 1.56 million square kilometres, yet nearly 77% of its territory is already degraded, according to information presented at the conference.
Prime Minister Nyam-Osor Uchral said the problem required greater international cooperation. “It is now widely recognized that desertification, land degradation and drought are challenges that transcend national borders and require a collective response from humanity,” he said.
Over the next two weeks, governments, development institutions, civil society and private-sector participants are expected to negotiate measures aimed at increasing investment in sustainable land management and strengthening drought resilience.
The Great Green Wall Initiative is also expected to feature prominently. A pavilion led by the Pan-Afrrican Agency of the Great Green Wall and co-hosted by the AfDB and other partners has been established as a platform for discussions around restoring degraded landscapes across the continent.
The continent has no shortage of restoration ambitions. The difficulty is developing bankable projects, absorbing risk in fragile states and ensuring that funding remains available long enough to generate lasting environmental and economic benefits.
Land restoration is increasingly being positioned not as an environmental expense but as productive investment one capable of supporting agriculture, protecting livelihoods, strengthening climate adaptation and potentially reducing some of the economic pressures that contribute to instability.
If COP17 succeeds in moving capital towards those outcomes, restoring degraded land could become part of a wider African development strategy. The challenge now, as the UNCCD has emphasised, is converting commitments into hectares restored, livelihoods protected and communities made more resilient.
