COP17: How Africa can unlock billions for land restoration

As negotiations continue at the 17th session of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17) in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, the challenge of financing land restoration remains central to efforts to tackle desertification, drought and land degradation.

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In this interview with PREMIUM TIMES on the sidelines of COP17 in Mongolia, Louise Baker, the Director of the UNCCD Global Mechanism, says African governments need to move beyond project-by-project funding and develop large, bankable landscape programmes capable of attracting public and private investment.

At COP17, about $1.3 billion in new and pipeline finance has been announced for rangelands, underscoring growing interest in restoration as an investment opportunity rather than solely a development or humanitarian intervention. In this interview, the UNCCD official explains the financing mechanisms that could unlock investment at scale, how Nigeria can make rangeland restoration attractive to investors, the support available to countries with plans but no investment-ready projects, and how carbon finance can be structured to ensure farmers and pastoralists benefit.

Excerpt:

PT: What specific financing mechanisms can unlock investment at scale for land restoration in Africa?

Baker: The question is not where to find one big fund. It is how to move restoration from the aid column into the investment column. Four approaches are dominating at the moment. First is project preparation. The binding constraint is not really capital; it is the pipeline. Development banks said as much during Finance Day. Project preparation support helps countries access funding from institutions such as the Global Environment Facility (GEF), Green Climate Fund (GCF) and development banks. Second are sovereign and structured instruments. Debt-for-nature swaps and nature-performance bonds can bring different financiers together around a single national programme.

Third are domestic policy levers, which are often the most effective of all. These include tax incentives for restoration, payments for ecosystem services and the repurposing of harmful subsidies. Fourth are risk-sharing instruments, including guarantees, first-loss capital and index-based insurance. At COP17, we have seen $1.3 billion in new and pipeline finance for rangelands.

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PT: How do African governments move from project-by-project funding to large, bankable landscape programmes?

Baker: There are three shifts, and Nigeria is well placed for all three—first, aggregate. Package many community-level interventions into one investable unit rather than chase 30 separate donor conversations. Second, treat restoration as infrastructure with a revenue line. Investors think in terms of return on investment — economic, social and environmental. That means designing programmes around what restores the land while also producing value through livestock value chains, gum arabic, fodder, dairy, irrigated horticulture, and water security for downstream users. Third is the enabling environment. This includes land tenure clarity and a national green taxonomy that allows domestic banks to classify and lend to green investments. Mongolia, as host of COP17, has just set a 10 per cent green lending target by 2030, published a national green taxonomy and launched the first national Business4Land Hub. There is nothing about that model that could not be done in Abuja, and Nigeria has the deepest capital market in the region to do it with.

PT: What would make Nigerian rangeland restoration financially attractive to investors rather than a government expense?

Baker: This is the right question, and 2026 — the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists — is the moment to ask it. A report released here on Monday puts the annual benefit flow from rangelands at between $21 trillion and $47 trillion, equivalent to as much as about $5,000 per hectare per year. Restoring rangelands typically returns $4 to $6 for every dollar invested, rising to as much as $36 when wider public benefits, such as water supply, are counted. Rangelands cover more than half of the Earth’s land surface and support around two billion people, including some 500 million pastoralists. Up to half are degraded or at risk. From what I am told, in Nigeria’s case, authorities report that more than half of rangelands and grazing routes are degraded, while 23.4 per cent of the country’s national territory — about 21 million hectares — is degraded overall. So the asset is not marginal, but it has been invisible. “Rangelands” appear in the national climate plans of just 24 countries, compared with 181 countries for “forests”.

Four things can make Nigerian rangeland restoration investable: one, secure and clarified tenure and grazing rights. No investor finances a 20-year asset on contested land. In Nigeria, this is also a peace and security question, given the farmer-herder conflict. Tenure is an important precondition: two, a commercial anchor. Livestock, dairy, leather and fodder markets can ensure restoration is financed through a value chain rather than a government budget line. Three, risk instruments matched to rangeland risks. That means drought, especially. Index-based insurance can ensure that a bad rainfall year does not wipe out either the borrower or the lender. Four, a pipeline. That is precisely what the Rangelands Flagship Initiative is. I hope we will see more Nigerian projects in the pipeline going forward.

PT: What practical support can the Global Mechanism provide to countries that have plans but no investment-ready projects?

Baker: The Global Mechanism exists under Article 21 to help countries mobilise resources. Concretely, we offer target setting and updating, as well as project and programme development. We work with governments to turn national priorities into transformative programmes structured for the requirements of the GEF, the Green Climate Fund, development banks and commercial co-financiers. That includes feasibility studies, results frameworks, financial structuring and matching projects to the right funding window. We also support national drought plans through the Drought Initiative, which increasingly function as investment plans rather than simply policy documents. The RGDRP and DRIF are coming. There is also private-sector matchmaking through Business4Land and national Business4Land Hubs. These can connect governments with banks, corporates and project developers. We also help identify blended and concessional capital. Sometimes, there are small direct grants. With the Korea Forest Service and UNDP, we have just opened a call under the Greening Drylands Partnership, with $2.4 million going directly to innovative community-level implementers.

PT: How can carbon finance and private investment benefit farmers and pastoralists rather than create new inequalities?

Baker: In our paper, From Carbon to Co-benefits: Scaling Carbon Finance for Land, Livelihoods and Long-Term Resilience, we looked at how carbon markets are growing rapidly — from roughly $3 billion today to a projected $30 billion to $100 billion by 2030 — while the benefits are not necessarily reaching the people managing the land. Our position is that a credible land-based carbon project has to satisfy three tests, not one.

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First, measurable gains in land health. These should be aligned with land degradation neutrality principles and include soil organic carbon, land cover and land productivity — not carbon tonnes alone. Second, equitable participation and benefit-sharing. Communities should be involved in project design from the start, hold rights and, ideally, hold equity.

In Burkina Faso, TreeAid structured a programme in which communities retain a long-term equity share in the credits, currently around one million credits. This means they can benefit from future price appreciation rather than being paid once and forgotten. Rabobank’s ACORN platform allows participating smallholders to retain up to 80 per cent of the revenue from their carbon removal units. Third, robust and affordable measurement, reporting and verification (MRV). Verification systems that only large developers can afford risk excluding smallholders and communities.

Two design features matter enormously for cash flow: pre-financing and forward sale of credits. These ensure farmers are not asked to carry years of costs before receiving their first payment. The other is digital aggregation, which allows fragmented smallholdings to become an investable unit without smallholders losing the value they create.

To be honest, carbon is one important instrument, but it is not the answer. Drylands are underrepresented in carbon markets, and much of what rangeland restoration delivers — water retention, drought resilience and biodiversity — is not a carbon tonne.

That is why we are also watching biodiversity credits and resilience credits closely. Governments also have a decisive role to play through national registries, clear rules on who owns the credit and who owns the land, and effective enforcement. Done well, carbon finance can become a genuine income stream for pastoralists and farmers rather than another mechanism through which the people managing the land are excluded from its economic value.