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Your Royal Highness,
Your Excellency, Eng. Abdulrahman Abdulmohsen Al-Fadley, Minister for Environment, Water and Agriculture,
Excellencies, Ministers, Ambassadors, invited guests.
My thanks to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for hosting World Environment Day 2024. During this global celebration, we are asking everyone to join the movement to restore our lands, build drought resilience and combat desertification.
Land degradation, desertification and drought are not only arid nation problems. They are global problems.
Land degradation affects over three billion people, damaging livelihoods and food security. Tens of millions of people face drought, with women suffering the most. In drylands, women and girls can spend 40 per cent of their caloric intake just carrying water. Sand and dust storms blanket vast areas, causing health problems, closing airports and schools and destroying crops.
But restoring land, combatting desertification and building drought resilience are key strategies to address these problems. Key strategies to the full triple planetary crisis: the crisis of climate change, the crisis of nature and land loss, and the crisis of pollution and waste.
Restoration boosts livelihoods, lowers poverty and builds resilience to extreme weather – supporting the Sustainable Development Goals.
Restoration increases carbon storage, making it a key tool for achieving the Paris Agreement – although it is not a replacement for deep emissions cuts.
Restoration of 15 per cent of degraded land and halting further conversion could avoid up to 60 per cent of expected species extinctions, making it a vital tool to achieving the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
The world is acting to deliver these solutions.
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration is backing commitments to restore one billion hectares of land – an area larger than China. At the sixth UN Environment Assembly in February this year, nations agreed to strengthen sustainable land management. And Saudi Arabia is leading, regionally and globally. Through the Saudi Green Initiative to protect 30 per cent of land and sea. Through the Middle East Green Initiative. Through the Saudi presidency of the G20, which brought the G20 Global Land Restoration Initiative. And by hosting the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Conference of the Parties later this year. My deep thanks.
World Environment Day, now in its 51st year, is a moment to amplify these efforts. Today, more than 3,500 events – a new record – are being held across the world, showing a real desire for change.
From Times Square to Trafalgar square, to bus shelters and airports in Beijing, Beirut and Osaka, to billboards in Botswana, Eswatini, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe – World Environment Day is clearly on everyone’s mind.
We’re also seeing leaders across the world host national events in celebration of World Environment Day. From special tree-planting events across the Maldives hosted by President Mohamed Muizzu, to a week of environment events in Germany hosted by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
With this momentum, we must use this moment to begin pushing in five key areas.
One, unite action on land under the three Rio Conventions.
Later this year, the three Rio Conventions – on climate, on biodiversity and on land –are each holding a Conference of Parties. Land restoration can be the golden thread that ties together action and ambition across these three important gatherings. Nations can weave this thread by linking their climate pledges and national biodiversity strategies and action plans with land degradation neutrality commitments under the UNCCD. And by ensuring that drought preparedness is part of resilience efforts.
Two, restore degraded land in full cooperation with those who work it.
Success is not just about hectares under restoration or trees planted. It is also about improvements in land-based natural capital, restored ecosystems services and sustained livelihoods. And we must remember that land is, to many peoples and cultures around the world, sacred. So, land restoration must account for the traditional knowledge and belief systems of indigenous peoples.
Three, reform food systems.
Around 90 per cent of our food comes from soil, but food systems are the primary driver of land degradation. We need to stop over-using fertilizers. Invest in regenerative agriculture. Direct agricultural subsidies to sustainable farming that produces affordable and nutritious food. Invest in agroforestry and permaculture practices. This, in tandem with restoration, is how we ensure healthy soil, water and biodiversity for increased food security.
Four, get private finance behind halting and reversing nature loss.
UNEP’s State of Finance for Nature tells us that finance flows to nature-based solutions are a third of the levels needed to reach climate, biodiversity and land degradation targets by 2030. Most existing money comes from the public sector. Meanwhile, trillions of dollars of financial flows harm nature.
The private sector must up its game. The World Economic Forum 2024 risk report ranked biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse as the third-biggest risk to business over the next ten years. Governments can help by creating policies that influence investment choices and shift private capital toward outcomes that benefit nature.
Five, lean on each other across borders.
To restore land effectively, we need to do it together, across nations and regions. The Great Green Wall Initiative shows just how powerful this kind of cooperation can be. This initiative is restoring 100 million hectares in an 8,000 km-long strip across Sahel nations. It has already created over 300,000 rural jobs.
Friends,
Our land is our future. We must protect and restore it so that we can slow and adapt to climate change. Return nature to full health. And increase the livelihoods and food security of billions of people around the world.
So, on World Environment Day, I ask everyone to join Generation Restoration and do whatever they can to protect the land.
