The 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (COP17) kicked off on Monday in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, uniting over 10,000 stakeholders from across the globe to confront three interconnected planetary crises: accelerating desertification, widespread land degradation, and intensifying drought events.
Running for two weeks under the unifying slogan “Restore the land, restore hope,” the summit brings together delegations from all 197 member parties of the convention, alongside senior government officials, business executives, and civil society leaders to collaborate on actionable solutions. For host nation Mongolia, the urgency of the issue hits close to home: Prime Minister Nyam-Osoryn Uchral opened the summit by highlighting that roughly 80% of the country’s total territory already suffers from damaging soil degradation. In his opening address, Uchral pushed global parties to move past non-binding past pledges and deliver tangible, on-the-ground outcomes. He outlined three core priorities for global action: scaling up targeted investment in large-scale and local land restoration initiatives, expanding the meaningful participation of frontline local communities and traditional pastoralists who depend on healthy land for survival, and integrating cutting-edge science and innovative technologies into restoration strategies.
Yasmine Fouad, Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, echoed this call for urgent action, warning that ongoing land degradation and drought are already placing critical systems at risk globally. She emphasized that these environmental threats are already undermining global food production, destabilizing potable water supplies, and eroding the economic resilience of vulnerable communities worldwide. Fouad made clear that the core mission of COP17 should be to rebrand itself as an “implementation summit,” one that translates years of international climate and land commitments into measurable, verifiable progress that improves outcomes for people and the planet.
Over the course of the summit, delegates will tackle a broad, interconnected policy agenda that covers drought preparedness and mitigation, cross-border management of sand and dust storms, large-scale land restoration target setting, sustainable financing mechanisms, resilient food systems, integrated water management, climate-induced migration linked to land degradation, and equitable land rights for Indigenous and local communities. UN data underscores the scale of the crisis: an estimated 3.2 billion people around the world already face daily impacts from land degradation, drought, and the cascading crises they trigger.
The summit’s second week, running from August 24 to 28, will feature high-level engagement, with ministers and other senior government leaders taking part in cross-border dialogues and issue-focused thematic sessions. A key priority for negotiators during this period will be finalizing a long-awaited legally binding global framework on drought. Negotiations on this framework were not completed at the 2024 COP16 held in Riyadh, leaving delegates in Ulaanbaatar to resolve outstanding differences and deliver a final agreement to guide global action.