UNCCD COP17: India Puts Pastoralists at the Centre of Rangeland Restoration

Core Context

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is one of the three Rio Conventions to emerge from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, alongside the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Adopted in 1994 and headquartered in Bonn, Germany, the UNCCD is the only legally binding international agreement that links environment and development to sustainable land management, with a particular focus on drylands, arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas where some of the world's most vulnerable ecosystems and communities are found.

India ratified the UNCCD in 1996 and has since anchored its domestic action around the concept of Land Degradation Neutrality, or LDN, a state in which the amount and quality of land resources remain stable or improve over time. At the fourteenth Conference of Parties, which India itself hosted in New Delhi in 2019, the country announced an ambitious national target of restoring 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030. This commitment is tracked using the Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India, prepared by the Space Applications Centre of ISRO, which uses satellite remote sensing to map the extent and change in degraded land across states over a fifteen-year window.

Latest Developments

UNCCD COP17 is being held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, from 17 to 28 August 2026 under the theme "Restoring Land, Restoring Hope", with rangeland restoration and the well-being of pastoralist communities forming a central agenda item this year. Addressing a Ministerial Dialogue on the Restoration of Rangelands and the Well-being of Pastoralist Communities, India's Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Bhupender Yadav, argued that successful restoration must begin with treating pastoralists as custodians of these landscapes rather than merely as beneficiaries of government schemes.

Yadav highlighted the sheer diversity of India's rangelands, spanning Himalayan alpine pastures, the savannas of Central India, the arid Thar and Kachchh landscapes, and the southern sholas, all of which support livestock-based livelihoods while regulating water and carbon cycles. He pointed to India's use of satellite-based Desertification and Land Degradation Atlases as the scientific backbone for restoration planning, alongside the recognition of grazing rights and Community Forest Resource rights, granted under the Forest Rights Act of 2006, as tools that give local communities a genuine stake in land stewardship. India also cited its own track record, having restored 21.76 million hectares of degraded land between 2011 and 2020, an effort that generated an estimated 1.22 billion person-days of employment. On the finance front, India joined calls for diversified, adequate, and predictable international financing for land restoration and drought resilience, welcoming a global package of about USD 1.3 billion launched at COP17 for rangeland restoration and offering to share its experience through South-South cooperation.

UPSC Prelims Angle

• UNCCD is one of three Rio Conventions born from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, the other two being UNFCCC and CBD; only UNCCD focuses specifically on land degradation and desertification.
• India's national target, announced while hosting UNCCD COP14 in New Delhi in 2019, is to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality and restore 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030.
• The Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India is prepared by the Space Applications Centre, ISRO, and shows roughly 29.7 percent of India's land area as degraded.
• Community Forest Resource rights, cited as a tool for community-led restoration, are granted under the Forest Rights Act, 2006.
• UNCCD COP17 is being hosted by Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar, a detail examiners often test through "conference and host country" matching questions.