UNGA76: Presentation of the Draft Resolution entitled ‘International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (2026)'

Your Excellency,  

Distinguished delegates, 

I thank you, Excellency, Ambassador Vorshilov, for your introductory remarks.  At the outset, on behalf of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, I would like to thank the Government of Mongolia for its leadership in shepherding the proposal of the ‘International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (2026)’ at FAO and now at the General Assembly. 

Rangelands and pastoralism underpin the food security and livelihoods of millions of people throughout the world, provide essential nature-based services and offer vast potential to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals, including SDGs 1, 2, 13 and 15. It is because of this potential and the challenges that rangelands and pastoralism face, including drought, degradation, pressure on land and increasingly erratic climate, that the proposal for this international observance came about.

In this regard, the draft resolution the General Assembly will consider is the result of a thorough discussion in the context of FAO and its governing bodies. Following its proposal by the Government of Mongolia, the draft resolution has been discussed and endorsed first by the Committee on Agriculture and the FAO Council in 2020, and finally adopted in 2021 by the FAO Conference, which requested that the General Assembly consider the matter.

If proclaimed, the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists will help raise awareness on the perceived natural and cultural values of rangelands and pastoral livelihood systems. It will increase global understanding of their importance to global food security and environmental services, highlighting valuable traditional knowledge. It will foster innovation towards sustainability and overcoming poverty of pastoralists and boost efforts for investment in pastoral systems and restoration of degraded rangelands. And it will support the achievement of the SDGs and the transformational change for more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable rangelands and pastoralism for better production, better nutrition, better environment, and better life, leaving no one behind. Finally, I would like to assure you that FAO will continue to provide technical support as you discuss the resolution at the General Assembly and in the implementation of the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists if the proposal is considered favorably.

I thank you.