IUCN Asia championed science, partnerships and local action at UNCCD COP17

Bridging Policy, science and practice

A core objective in Ulaanbaatar was demonstrating how multi-stakeholder collaboration, coupled with sound science, delivers Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) on the ground.

On August 26, IUCN ARO hosted the flagship side event From Regional Partnerships to Local Impact: Advancing Land Degradation Neutrality in Asia, featuring a keynote address by the Indonesian Vice Minister of Forestry. The session, moderated by Dr. Satrio Adi Wicaksono, Regional Coordinator for Forests and Drylands, gathered national leaders and practitioners from Indonesia, Timor-Leste, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, to highlight how scientific diagnostic tools can enable countries to plan, implement, and track large-scale landscape restoration. IUCN also highlighted key regional initiatives such as the GEF-8 Southeast Asia and Pacific (SEAP) Forests Integrated Program and Building River Dialogue and Governance (BRIDGE) in the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna.

The discussion underscored that regional ambition must translate into local empowerment. For example, Indonesia shared insights on its efforts to achieve the LDN, which revolves around having strong policy commitment, utilising landscape and watershed approaches, strong collaboration and cooperation, deploying science-based monitoring and emphasising community participation. Timor-Leste highlighted community-driven agroforestry, including under the EU-funded AFCLIM-TL project, to restore steep watersheds and secure smallholder farming livelihoods.

Further, Pakistan shared lessons from independent third-party monitoring and GIS verification for nationwide afforestation and the collaboration with the private sector, while also highlighting the importance of gender-transformative action plans. Bangladesh illustrated how grassroots women’s leadership is driving coastal wetland and river basin restoration under the IUCN-supported BRIDGE initiative. 

Complementing this, IUCN showcased the rapid progress of RESULT Asia-Pacific at the LAND 2030+ (Linking Action, Network and Delivery - Finance, Partnerships and Livelihoods for Restoration at Scale) event on August 24, emphasising the role of RESULT Asia-Pacific in spearheading multistakeholder collaboration to support 22 countries in achieving their restoration commitments, building national capacities on planning and monitoring, and facilitating cross-border actions on restoration. During this event, the Minister of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change of India also highlighted the progress made by India on Bonn Challenge. 
 
Scaling restoration requires more than isolated projects; it demands system change that aligns policies, institutions, and finance around a shared vision for resilient landscapes. On August 28, IUCN co-organised the side event Making System Change Practical: Landscapes, Policy, Finance and the Future of Restoration alongside Commonland, WRI, ELD, Regen10, and CGIAR. IUCN shared how coherent governance, blended finance, and whole-of-society landscape-level leadership can unlock restoration at the speed and scale required, while also mentioning the importance of learning from the building blocks of successful restoration projects. 

Unlocking private sector and blended finance

Achieving LDN targets by 2030 requires closing a massive investment gap that public finance alone cannot cover. IUCN spotlighted the necessity of private-sector solutions and blended finance mechanisms.

On August 24, in partnership with the Ant Forest Foundation, IUCN launched the pre-publication edition of Business for Nature: Private-Sector Solutions to Land Degradation and Desertification in Asian Drylands. The launch unpacked the report's systematic assessment of scalable, non-state restoration approaches. 

By showcasing real-world case studies, the session illustrated that private engagement must extend far beyond philanthropic funding. They demonstrated that, when corporate capabilities are embedded in credible ecological design and local stewardship, they shorten the distance between innovation and implementation, bringing new constituencies into restoration and ensuring success is measured by long-term ecosystem health and equitable benefits rather than mere activity counts. 

Further, IUCN facilitated the From Global Science to Local Action: Toolkit for Resilient Drylands and Rangelands Workshop in the Green Zone on August 26. The event discussed NbS Global Standards in detail, as well as provided key insights from the newly launched report.  

On August 26, IUCN presented its technical contributions to the Landscape Partnership Asia during an AFoCO and Korea Forest Service side event. IUCN highlighted how blended finance mechanisms — such as the SEAP Forests Investment & Technical (SEAP FIT) Coalition — can help de-risk private capital so that restoration targets across Asia can be achieved more efficiently.

IUCN participated in the Asian Development Bank's NSFH event on August 26, during which the newly launched FIELD Initiative (Financing Investments and Eradicating Land Degradation and Desertification) was discussed. IUCN presented strategies for integrating NbS into hybrid green-grey infrastructure, demonstrating how coastal mangrove restoration in Viet Nam and urban wetland management in Bangladesh and Hong Kong can create bankable, multi-functional landscapes.

Shifting from Reactive to Proactive Drought and Disaster Resilience

To address the escalating severity of droughts and sand and dust storms, IUCN championed systems-thinking and the application of the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions to replace reactive crisis management with proactive resilience.

At a dedicated drylands and drought management session on August 21, a multinational panel from Mongolia, China, Pakistan, Nepal, India, and GEF Secretariat explored strategies to overcome institutional silos, deploy sustainable rangeland management, share early warning systems, and utilise innovative financing to combat relevant issues, including transboundary issues like sand and dust storms. Panellists highlighted the importance of holistic multi-level planning, combining traditional knowledge and technology, paying attention to the livelihoods of local communities, and developing a pipeline of bankable investment projects.

Further, broadcast live on national television, the August 23 Green Zone event Integrated Governance, NbS, and Partnerships for Resilient Drylands was jointly organised by IUCN and the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC). Bridging African and South Asian contexts, the session brought together perspectives from multiple parts within IUCN, including IUCN India, IUCN Kenya/ESARO, and the Multilateral Finance Unit. The panel emphasised reducing silos through integrated programming across scales and sectors, and championed a whole of society approach to integrated drought management. To scale these efforts, the panel underscored the critical need for an investment support facility capable of unlocking private financing and attracting other actors, with IUCN emphasising the compelling economic case that sustainable rangeland management can return up to $35 for every $1 invested.

On August 23, IUCN also participated in a dedicated Green Zone panel on Sand and Dust Storm (SDS) Risk Mitigation alongside FAO, the Korean Forest Fire Society, the Mongolian University of Science and Technology, and the Green Asia Network. The discussion emphasised that sand and dust storms are not isolated weather events, but rather root-cause symptoms of overgrazed rangelands, damaged watersheds, and bare soils. To mitigate these risks at their source, panellists advocated for ecosystem restoration driven by a "One Health" transboundary approach.  

During the designated Water Day on August 25, across five collaborative side events related to water—partnering with the World Bank Group, IWMI, Freshwater Challenge Core Partners, and the Government of Mongolia—IUCN ARO experts, including Dr Niladri Gupta, Regional Coordinator for Water and Wetlands, advocated for moving from crisis-driven responses to proactive drought management. These sessions presented a unified argument for scaling sustainable investments:

• Climate and water-risk information must be affordable, trusted, and accessible to the farmers, herders, and governments who need to act on it.
• Countries must shift to proactive adaptation by linking hydroinformatics and AI with the institutions, planning systems, and finance required for early action.
• To move Nature-based Solutions (NbS) from promising pilots to scalable, budgetable interventions, they must solve existing problems, offer legible economics, and utilise shared benchmarks like the IUCN Global Standard. 

A whole-of-society approach 

Recognising that landscape stewardship must bridge generational lines, IUCN ensured that youth leadership, women empowerment, and traditional knowledge were positioned at the centre of the dialogue.

On 21 August 2026, IUCN, together with the UN Women, UNCCD Youth Caucus and ECB sustainable youth foundation convened a dialogue bringing together voices across generations, communities and professional backgrounds. The session explored how gender-responsive, youth-inclusive and community-driven approaches can strengthen restoration, while recognising the knowledge, leadership and solutions that already exist within communities.

Further, on August 27, IUCN partnered with the International Forestry Students' Association (IFSA), YPARD, GLF, BSSS, and TNC to host a session pairing youth representative with local experts. The dialogue focused on breaking down sectoral silos between forestry and agriculture, exploring how plant health, agroecology, and traditional pastoral knowledge must be integrated into national climate policies by positioning youth as co-designers.

During a PANORAMA and WOCAT event on August 18, IUCN emphasised that knowledge management must move beyond repositories to become an active accelerator of implementation and peer-to-peer learning. The importance of traditional ecological knowledge was also highlighted. 

From the steppes of Ulaanbaatar to the road ahead for COP18 in Egypt in 2028, UNCCD COP17 underscored that land degradation cannot be reversed in isolation. By continuing to bridge rigorous science with blended finance, and by translating high-level policy into integrated landscape and cross-border action, IUCN remains committed to ensuring that international environmental pledges deliver measurable, lasting hope for both nature and communities.