UNCCD COP17 Events

24 August | 11:00-12:00

Venue: IUCN Pavilion, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: Landscape Alliance (ICRAF), CA4SH, Alliance Bioversity-CIAT, ICRISAT, IFPRI

This session examines the state of soil data, identifies critical gaps, and presents innovations, including harmonized monitoring frameworks and Indigenous approaches. It highlights how Soil Information Systems strengthen Land Degradation Neutrality reporting, de-risk investment, and support the implementation of Decision 29/COP.16 on Rangelands and Pastoralists.

Livestream

24 August | 14:00-15:00

Venue: IUCN Pavilion, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: IUCN and partners

This high-level dialogue will present emerging evidence and lessons from IUCN's East Africa dryland portfolio and explore the next generation of investment opportunities, including the proposed TWENDE 2.0 Nature-Positive Rangelands Investment Facility and the GEF-9 Northern Rangelands Programme. The session will also serve as a platform to launch the East Africa Nature-Positive Rangelands Investment Coalition, a regional partnership intended to align policy, knowledge, finance, and investment actors.

Livestream

25 August | 18:00

Venue: Business 4 Land Pavilion, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: Climate Champions Team, COP30 and COP31 Presidencies

This session will showcase the solutions being delivered through the Global Climate Action Agenda and explore opportunities to accelerate collaboration and implementation on the ground, highlighting the progress being made through Plans to Accelerate Solutions (PAS) and other initiatives. 

It will feature representatives from the COP30 and COP31 Presidencies, as well as Samed Ağırbaş, COP31 Climate High-Level Champion, and Gonzalo Muñoz, COP25 Climate High-Level Champion.

26 August | 08:30-10:00

Venue: Pavillion 1, Changwon Initiative, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: AFoCO, Landscape Partnership Asia (LPA)

This event aims to foster a shared understanding of the enabling conditions required to scale up landscape restoration across Asia. By promoting dialogue among diverse stakeholders, the event seeks to strengthen collaboration, enhance investment readiness, and identify practical pathways for mobilizing greater financial and technical support for restoration efforts. Particular attention will be given to addressing persistent barriers to mobilizing finance, fragmented stakeholder coordination, and weak policy and institutional frameworks.

26 August | 10:00-13:00

Venue: Plenary, Blue Zone

Rangelands Ministerial Dialogue will exchange views on how to achieve greater policy alignment and land use planning frameworks that prevent rangeland degradation, conversion, and fragmentation, recognizing the critical role that pastoralist systems and community-based grazing rights, secure tenure, customary governance systems and mobility rights play in the stewardship of rangelands.

26 August | 11:00 - 12:30

Venue: Children and Youth Pavilion, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: YPARD, KCOA network, UNCCD Youth Caucus, WFF Youth Initiative, SNV, UVS, GECCI, ILC, CA4SH, Barranquilla+20

This session will demonstrate how agroecology provides a practical and inclusive approach to achieving land degradation neutrality (LDN) and advancing the goals of (UNCCD). Through the experiences of young professionals, policymakers, and community leaders, participants will explore how youth leadership is driving ecosystem restoration.

26 August | 15:00-16:30

Venue: MET-02, Zone A, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: CA4SH, Landscape Alliance (ICRAF), EIT Food, AOFH, YPARD, 4 per 1000, WBCSD, WWF, SNV, Ambition Loop, Climate Champions Team, Alliance Bioversity-CIAT, RF, WHH, GFAR, EDF, EAFF, Regen10, YOUNGO, GIZ, 1AF

Scaling regenerative agriculture requires more than proven solutions. It needs financial and institutional pathways that work for different actors. This session presents progress on the COP30 Action Agenda Plans to Accelerate Regenerative Agriculture and RAIZ, exploring how soil health investments deliver returns across landscapes and value chains through public-private partnerships, concessional finance, and policy alignment.

26 August | 18:00-19:30

Venue: MET-01, Zone A, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: Welthungerhilfe , Agroecology Coalition, IYRP, WWF, ILRI, Landscape Alliance (ICRAF), Alliance Bioversity-CIAT, 4 per 1000

The event aims to explore how carbon standards and climate finance leveraging can be improved for rangeland restoration and livestock systems, and how pastoral mobility can function as a mechanism for restoring degraded rangelands. It will highlight rangelands and carbon sequestration potential, need to protect existing carbon stocks, how to unlocking climate and carbon finance, and mobility as a restoration mechanism.

26 August | 10:00–11:30

Venue: Action Dome

This event will bring together representatives of diverse local communities from across regions to strengthen political support for the establishment of the Caucus for Local Communities and to elevate the role of local communities in shaping and implementing UNCCD outcomes. Through community-led testimonies and dialogue, the event will highlight the contributions of pastoralist, peasant, agroecological, mountain, forest and coastal communities to sustainable land management, rangeland stewardship and ecosystem restoration.

27 August | 08:30-10:00

Venue: MET-06, Zone A, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: WFF Global Youth Action Initiative, FAO, WeCaN Community of Knowledge Practice, FAO Mongolia, UNCCD Youth Caucus, IYRP Youth Working Group, CA4SH, Save Soil, Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT

Responding to UNCCD COP16 Decision 29/COP.16, the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP) and the International Year of the Woman Farmer (IYWF), this side event will launch a Global Youth Policy Brief on Youth and Young Women in Pastoralism, presenting evidence and recommendations to advance youth-led, gender-responsive policy solutions for sustainable pastoralism and rangeland governance.

27 August | 08:30-10:00

Venue: MET-05, Zone A, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: SFA, ICRAF, CA4SH, WWF, FAO

This session will highlight why healthy soils and landscapes matter; how responsible stewardship and improvements can be measured, validated and translated into practical production systems; and how credible evidence can support market recognition, value addition and stronger incentives for producers.

27 August | 09:00-10:30

Venue: MET-24, Zone D, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: UNCCD, Ambition Loop, CA4SH, Agroecology Coalition, UNEP

This session focuses on relevant agricultural land, rangeland and soil health metrics, contributing to a common framework for measuring progress on regenerative agriculture and agroecological practices, as well as showcasing tools that strengthen evidence-based decision-making across scales and actors. It culminates in the endorsement of the Land & Soil Breakthroughs, a framework and road map developed under the Riyadh Action Agenda.

27 August | 10:30-12:00

Venue: MET-01, Zone A, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: Alliance Bioversity-CIAT, AE, BMZ/GIZ, SNV, WFF Youth Initiative, WHH, WWF, IUCN, 4 per 1000”, CA4SH, AICS IT

This session shifts the conversation from principles to practice. Rather than presenting agroecology as a standalone solution, it will explore how synergetic implementation of the Rio Conventions can maximize impact at landscape level. Through real-world examples, the session will examine where synergies can be strengthened, where trade-offs emerge, and what changes are needed in policy, finance, and governance to enable integrated delivery. 

27 August | 10:30 - 12:00

Venue: MET-07, Zone A, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: Save Soil, WFF, WOCAT, CA4SH

A major barrier to scaling investment in soil and land restoration is the lack of soil data to demonstrate impacts and returns on investment. Strengthening soil data systems through greater collaboration between scientific institutions, government and grassroots stakeholders offers an opportunity to build more inclusive and actionable data systems capable of supporting both effective land management and increased investment in soil restoration.

27 August | 11:00-12:30

Venue: MET-23, Zone D, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: UNCCD, CA4SH, FOLU, FAO, UNEP

Restoration commitments exist and the tools to deliver them are growing, but fragmentation and interoperability are slowing progress. This session opens with a fair of innovations, from RAIZ, AITO, IDRO, and K4GGWA Restoration Monitoring Dashboard to soil information systems and drought resilience datasets, and explores what it takes to make them genuinely work together, closing with a concrete call to action on coordination and alignment across the restoration tool ecosystem.

27 August | 13:00-14:30

Venue: MET-24, Zone D, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: UN Food Systems Coordination Hub and FAO, in partnership with UNDP, IUCN, IFAD, and CA4SH

This event demonstrates how complementary mandates and capacities can reinforce one another. By connecting national policy processes, restoration frameworks, financing mechanisms, implementation capacity and measurable soil-health outcomes, the event contributes to a shared soil-health agenda that supports UNCCD implementation while strengthening coherence with national food systems pathways and related processes.

27 August | 15:00-16:30

Venue: MET-03, Zone A, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: CA4SH, Landscape Alliance (ICRAF), GIZ, UNCCD Youth Caucus, IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law, Save Soil, UNCCD, Ambition Loop, WWF, 1AF, WFF Global Youth Initiative, Justdiggit

Global commitments on soil health are growing. Turning them into effective implementation on the ground is not linear. This session brings together leaders and policymakers to share lessons on soil health policy design and implementation, examine national and regional approaches, and explore the legal and governance conditions that accelerate action on the ground.

27 August | 15:30-17:00

Venue: MET-24, Zone D, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: UNCCD, Agroecology Coalition, CA4SH, FAO, UN Women, UNCCD Youth Caucus, WFF Global Youth Initiative

Young people and women farmers are already leading land and soil restoration across regions. This session celebrates their leadership during the International Year of Women Farmers, launches the Youth4Soil Manifesto Implementation Guide, and showcases innovations in soil health and agroecology, with particular attention to young women, Indigenous, and pastoralist youth.

27 August | 17:30-19:00

Venue: Action Dome, Blue Zone

Co-organizers: UNCCD, Ambition Loop

As food systems and soil health day marks the last day of the thematic days, it is a great opportunity to wrap-up and celebrate the main takeaways of the UNCCD COP17 Action Agenda, as well as paving the way forward to advance the UNCCD Action Agenda into the multilateral space.