By Abbas Nazil
The United Nations has named restoration initiatives in Brazil, Saudi Arabia and the Sahel as the 2026 World Restoration Flagships, recognising their efforts to rehabilitate degraded land, strengthen livelihoods and build resilience to climate change.
The three programmes were announced by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) during the ongoing UN desertification conference in Mongolia, where governments and stakeholders are discussing measures to address land degradation, drought and desertification.
Together, the flagship initiatives aim to restore nearly five million hectares of degraded land by 2030, an area equivalent to almost seven million football fields.
The UNCCD said the programmes demonstrate that large-scale land restoration can deliver environmental, social and economic benefits while helping communities cope with increasingly severe climate and land-related pressures.
The recognition comes as about 40 per cent of the world’s land is affected by degradation and drought, threatening the livelihoods of more than three billion people.
UNCCD chief Yasmine Fouad said the three programmes show that restoration can strengthen resilience, support livelihoods and deliver tangible benefits to people and communities.
The Brazilian initiative focuses on restoring the Cerrado, one of the world’s most biodiverse tropical savannahs, which covers about one-quarter of Brazil but has lost more than half of its native vegetation to large-scale land conversion and climate change.
The programme brings together more than 180 partners across nine Brazilian states and has already placed over 27,000 hectares under restoration while using seeds from more than 150 native plant species.
Its wider ambition is to restore two million hectares of the Cerrado by 2030, helping protect biodiversity, water resources, food production and Indigenous Peoples’ rights.
Saudi Arabia’s National Greening Programme was also recognised for its work in restoring degraded landscapes across the country’s rangelands, forests, deserts, urban areas and coastal ecosystems.
The programme has already brought one million hectares of degraded land under restoration and planted 159 million trees, while using approaches such as natural regeneration, controlled grazing, rainwater harvesting, wildlife reintroduction and treated wastewater.
It aims to restore 2.5 million hectares and plant 215 million trees by 2030, with the programme projected to generate up to 187,000 jobs and contribute to improved urban air quality.
The third flagship, the Sahel Integrated Resilience Initiative, operates across Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, where communities face the combined pressures of conflict, drought, climate change and land degradation.
Led by the World Food Programme, the initiative has rehabilitated more than 335,000 hectares since 2018 and strengthened food security and livelihoods for more than four million people.
Monitoring has shown improved soil and vegetation conditions at 75 per cent of monitored sites, while the number of households requiring humanitarian assistance during the lean season has declined by about 11 per cent in areas covered by the programme.
The initiative aims to restore 470,000 hectares by 2030, enhance biodiversity and potentially sequester up to 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
The UN’s recognition of the three programmes highlights a growing shift towards treating land restoration not only as an environmental intervention but also as a strategy for protecting food systems, water resources, economies and vulnerable communities from the escalating impacts of climate change.
