World Environment Day Commemoration, UNHQ New York

Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good morning, 

• I would like to begin by thanking the UN Environment Programme and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for inviting FAO to join you during this commemoration of World Environment Day.
• Today, we are deliberating on the important theme of “land restoration, desertification, and drought resilience”, as our food and agrifood systems depend on land, and so do people’s livelihoods.
• In fact, over 95 percent of the world’s food is produced on land; however, one-third of the world's agricultural land is degraded.   
• Globally, 3.2 billion people are affected by land degradation, especially rural communities, smallholder farmers, and the extremely poor.   
• Desertification and land degradation lead to hunger and poverty, drive unemployment, and forced migration, while increasing the risk of extreme weather related to climate change. 
• This is why land restoration efforts are vital, and why we must actively seek and seize opportunities to build drought resilience and improve livelihoods. 
• On agricultural land, a variety of practices can contribute to ecosystem restoration, including agroecology, climate-smart and conservation farming practices, sustainable land management and sustainable intensification, and regenerative agriculture.
• The restoration of forest landscapes, farming, and livestock should primarily contribute to restoring them to a healthy and stable state.
• Allow me to share some initiatives that demonstrate scalable and impactful restoration outcomes.
  1. First, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 is a key global initiative co-led by FAO and UNEP that aims to prevent, halt and reverse the degradation of ecosystems on every continent. It offers an important opportunity and framework to intensify our efforts in scaling up land restoration, enhancing partnerships and coordination, monitoring progress, and supporting countries in accessing more climate finance.
  2. Second, the Great Green Wall, which has just been named a UN Decade World Restoration Flagship. It is an ambitious initiative to restore lands across Africa to help families cope with climate change and keep desertification from further threatening already vulnerable communities. It has already restored over 15 million hectares of land.
  3. Third, Action Against Desertification is an initiative of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) to restore drylands and degraded lands to tackle the detrimental social, economic and environmental impact of land degradation and desertification. Over 100,000 hectares of degraded agro-sylvo-pastoral lands have been restored in the Sahel to date. 
• These are some of the many examples of how restoring degraded ecosystems to productive land can support rural communities, livelihoods, food security, and environmental goals. 

Ladies and gentlemen,  

• Allow me to conclude by offering four principles that must be prioritized in our efforts to recover and enhance the resilience and productivity of ecosystems:
  1. One, we must ensure that science-based and people-centered land restoration becomes our legacy to future generations by prioritizing women and youth. 
  2. Two, we can’t tackle land degradation without unleashing the economic potential of degraded lands and drylands and building back more resilient agrifood systems.
  3. Three, large-scale land restoration for small-scale farming is crucial to stop land degradation.
  4. And finally, we must utilize innovative monitoring and evaluation systems to measure progress toward achieving land degradation neutrality.
• FAO looks forward to the outcomes of the upcoming COP16 of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Saudi Arabia this December and reaffirms its continued commitment to work with Members and partners to combat desertification and drought to achieve a land degradation-neutral world for present and future generations. 
• I thank you.