This year’s World Environment Day campaign focuses on land restoration, desertification, and drought resilience under the slogan “Our land. Our future.
According to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, up to 40 percent of the planet’s land is degraded, directly affecting half of the world’s population and threatening roughly half of global GDP (US$44 trillion). The number and duration of droughts have increased by 29 percent since 2000 – without urgent action, droughts may affect over three-quarters of the world's population by 2050. Land restoration is a key pillar of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), a rallying call for the protection and revival of ecosystems all around the world, which is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
