Inger Andersen is Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme

When you live on the edge, you become acutely aware of balance.

As a young woman straight out of university in 1982, I had the privilege of teaching English at a Sudanese girls’ high school. After a couple of years, I landed a job supporting the emergency and relief work during the Sudanese drought and associated famine.

Those communities in Sudan knew very well that their two most precious assets were the acacia trees on their lands and the seeds saved for next year’s planting season.

Acacia fixes nitrogen in the soil – a natural fertiliser – while the gum Arabic from the trees is an income source. But when drought hits and all animals are sold, and the last of the food is eaten, the only thing left is to cut and sell the trees for firewood and charcoal. Once the trees are gone, the last thing left is the seeds. And once the seeds have been sacrificed for food, nothing is left.

After witnessing the devastating impacts of this famine, working on development and environmental sustainability became my life’s calling.

From projects in Kordofan and Darfur in Sudan, to Northern Uganda, Somalia, and the arid and semiarid lands of Tanzania and Kenya, I saw how long-term solutions could help move us beyond just a humanitarian response. Because nature is incredibly generous, if we allow it to be.

Solutions like re-establishing the gum arabic trees with communities in Western Sudan, to working on water harvesting in arid lands. Supporting “cut and carry” schemes to replace animal grazing, a major driver of land degradation and the associated desertification. Or re-introducing the old pre-colonial approach of “al-hima”, a practice known by dryland communities for hundreds of years that protects and allows fragile land to rest, optimising soil health and land management.

Land – and its fragility – teaches us a lot. Dryland communities around the world have spent generations adapting to extremes. History that allows pastoralists, farmers, Indigenous Peoples and local communities to understand the deep interconnections between land, water, biodiversity and livelihoods.

Today climate change is pushing these finely balanced systems beyond what they can withstand. As extreme and compounding impacts intensify, the margins for resilience are shrinking, meaning landscapes, livelihoods, and communities are being pushed closer to their limits.

Land degradation now affects 3.2 billion people. Desertification impacts 45 per cent of Africa’s land. Around 95 per cent of the food we eat depends on land, while by 2050, water scarcity could affect more than three-quarters of the global population.

As migration and security rise rapidly on the global agenda, we must also recognise the role that healthy – and degraded – land can play. Healthy, productive landscapes can strengthen resilience and stability. Degraded land can deepen insecurity, intensify competition for resources and leave people with fewer options, including whether they stay or move.

Land also shows us how interconnected our future is. We know the answer is not a simple, single-issue solution. We need to bring together science, local knowledge and multilateral cooperation to understand thresholds, navigate trade-offs and – ultimately – work with nature rather than against it.

This approach is at the heart of the World Restoration Flagships programme under the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, led by the UN Environment Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It recognises ambitious restoration initiatives that show what is possible when we move beyond protecting individual ecosystems to restoring landscapes at scale – halting land degradation, supporting livelihoods and strengthening resilience to climate change.

Now we must build on this work. A ‘Rio Trio’ year – with talks across land, biodiversity and climate change – creates a unique opportunity to put land at the centre of a more integrated response. As the first of these negotiations, COP17 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, can help set that direction and deliver greater global ambition on desertification, land degradation and drought.

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Drought will be a key topic. Our challenge remains shifting from reactive crisis response to prevention – stopping drought before it becomes a disaster. The Great Green Wall, a World Restoration Flagship, reminds us the most effective drought solutions are not emergency measures, but long-term investments in healthy landscapes.

That is why collective action on land is such a powerful opportunity. Land is not one issue among many. It is where climate, nature, food, water and security come together. And the places that have lived on the edge for the longest may hold the blueprint for how we can all learn to thrive within the planet’s limits.

Quite simply, land is life.

As leaders meet in Ulaanbaatar over the next week, we must remember investing in healthy land is an investment in food, health and water security, as well as peace and economic growth. 

The future of people and planet will be shaped by the health of the land beneath our feet. If we restore land, so the Acacia trees across the world can grow, we restore hope in a future for every community.

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How safeguarding land protects our future