Transforming our land for the future
About the Collection
We all depend on land for our survival – but its future is on the line. Every year, 100 million hectares of healthy and productive lands are degraded. This has dire consequences for people, nature, climate, and the global economy.
Land restoration is an urgent and achievable goal, and storytelling has an essential role to play in bringing our land back to life. By combining our collective imagination and creativity to respond to the world’s greatest challenges, we can inspire action to build a healthier, more sustainable future for all.
This collection has been curated in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), to support storytelling on an unprecedented scale. It features visually compelling, high-quality clips showing the major issues, impacts and solutions linked to global land degradation and restoration.
The launch of this collection comes ahead of a pivotal moment for international decision-making: the COP16 conference for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
Start your story
Help drive new storytelling about the future of our land by exploring this collection featuring world-class footage from leading filmmakers, interviews with innovators and community leaders, and data-driven visualisations of our changing planet.
Explore the collectionOur changing relationship with land
The story of humanity is inextricably tied to the story of our land. Throughout history, land has provided us with food, shelter and clothing, and sustained our economies, lives and livelihoods.
Our land is now severely degraded, and soils which are vital for plant growth (and take hundreds of years to form) are rapidly deteriorating. This change is largely driven by human activities such as deforestation, mining, unsustainable farming practices, pollution, urbanisation, and infrastructure development.
As humanity is becoming increasingly urban, our vital connection to land is weakening. A growing global population is also driving greater demand for natural resources. For example, the way we produce our food is the single biggest driver of land conversion, deforestation, and biodiversity loss.
“We depend on land for our survival. Yet, we treat it like dirt.”
— António Guterres, United Nations Secretary General
Every second, an equivalent of four football fields of healthy land becomes degraded, adding up to 100 million hectares every year.
40% of the Earth's surface is now degraded, affecting half of humanity.
How land degradation affects humanity
As our land loses vitality, its ability to support and protect us is also diminished. The significant human, social and economic impacts of land degradation include reduced food, water and energy security, which can lead to complex health challenges, human displacement, deaths and conflict.
Land degradation is also pushing biodiversity to the brink, increasing our vulnerability to natural disasters, and contributing to the climate crisis by releasing stored carbon into the atmosphere. This is creating a vicious cycle that accelerates further land degradation and global warming.
Since 2000, the number of droughts has risen by 29%, with one in four people in the world projected to face water scarcity by 2050. With droughts becoming more frequent and severe, sustainable land management is key to building resilience.
The world’s most vulnerable communities are worst affected. Drought, land degradation and desertification are affecting women and girls in particular, as well as indigenous communities and at-risk groups including people with disabilities.
"Climate instability, biodiversity loss, and land degradation are interconnected crises requiring interconnected solutions. A stable natural environment reinforces a stable climate and vice versa; healthy land underlies a sustainable future."
— Midori Paxton, Director, UNDP Nature Hub
Giving land a new lease of life
Land restoration is critical for achieving a sustainable future and addressing multiple global crises. It will help tackle climate change and nature loss, while closing the food gap, creating robust economies, and improving people’s health and wellbeing.
Now, we must scale up ambition and investment to restore 1.5 billion hectares of degraded land by 2030.
- One billion people under the age of 25 live in regions directly dependent on land and natural resources for jobs and livelihoods.
- Every US$1 invested in restoring degraded lands brings between $7-30 in economic returns.
- Investing in drought resilience is one of the most cost-effective actions countries and regions can take, with returns of up to 10 times the initial investment.
It is vital that all parts of society – citizens, governments and business – work together to preserve traditional and local knowledge, and recognise the critical role of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) in land stewardship.
Indigenous Peoples safeguard 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity, with areas managed by indigenous communities proven to have lower rates of deforestation and land degradation.
Through this collection on Open Planet, we’ve captured examples of land restoration efforts across the world – from pioneering solutions for sustainable food production in India, to regenerative farming in Argentina, to agroforestry in the Brazilian Amazon.
A global voice for land
In December 2024, leaders will come together for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD COP16): a landmark event to raise global ambition and accelerate action on land and drought resilience through a people-centred approach.
It will be the first major UN conference hosted by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – a region on the frontline of impacts from desertification, land degradation and drought.
World leaders must use this opportunity to turn commitments into global action and prioritise ambitious change for our land.
"A better future is possible: we can shift our global systems from nature-negative to nature-positive and climate-resilient. Together we can work to halt and reverse nature loss and restore degraded land and ecosystems, to ensure a healthy future on a thriving planet."
— Midori Paxton, Director, UNDP Nature Hub
Call for change
Together, we can become a global voice for the land by unleashing new storytelling to inspire hope and action in this critical decade. Explore our collection with UNDP to find high-quality, compelling visuals for your storytelling.
Start your story
Click the video above to see examples of clips from this collection.
