COP16 urges private sector to restore degraded land and battle drought

Negotiators at the United Nations summit on land degradation and desertification, or COP16, are calling on the global business community to do its part to protect the health of the world’s land.

The two-week conference, which kicked off Dec. 2, has explored approaches for how the private sector can promote and implement sustainable land practices across business operations, such as introducing better land and water management policies and financing nature-based solutions that protect and conserve the environment.

Land loss and drought could have major consequences not just for biodiversity and the climate, but for people’s livelihoods and big businesses too. The global economy could lose $23 trillion by 2050 due to land degradation, though halting this trend would cost $4.6 trillion, according to the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, or UNCCD. Up to 40% of the world’s land is already degraded — which makes it unusable for economic or agricultural purposes — and that figure is set to increase as the frequency of droughts surges.