UN names Cerrado, Sahel and Saudi greening as restoration flagships

The United Nations named three land programmes as World Restoration Flagships on 26 August at UNCCD COP17 in Ulaanbaatar: Brazil’s Cerrado work, the Sahel Integrated Resilience Initiative, and Saudi Arabia’s National Greening Program. Together they aim to put almost five million hectares under restoration by 2030. The UN Convention to Combat Desertification, UNEP and FAO made the awards under the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

The convention’s head used the ceremony to repeat a stock figure that sits behind the prizes: about 40 percent of the world’s land is degraded or in drought, with more than three billion people exposed. Flagships are the UN’s way of pointing at projects that already have hectares, partners and a 2030 number, rather than at pledges with no map.

Brazil’s Araticum effort, “Restoring Brazil’s Cerrado Savannah,” groups more than 180 organisations across nine states. The Cerrado is the world’s most species-rich tropical savanna and covers about a quarter of Brazil. More than half of its native cover is already gone to farming and climate stress. The project has put over 27,000 hectares into restoration so far and has used seed from more than 150 native plants. The 2030 target is two million hectares, through natural regeneration, direct seeding, restoration planting and agroforestry.

The Sahel programme runs in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. Since 2018 it has rehabilitated more than 335,000 hectares and the UN says it has steadied food and income for more than four million people. The method is unglamorous: restore soil, hold water, rebuild grazing rules, and cut the need for emergency aid in places that already live with conflict and drought. That combination is why the award text talks about food as much as trees.

Saudi Arabia’s National Greening Program claims about one million hectares already under restoration and 159 million trees planted. The work spans rangeland, forest, desert, cities and coastal mangrove. Officials also talk about treated wastewater and rainwater harvesting in dry belts, and about putting wildlife back into fenced restorations. The programme is written into Vision 2030 as an environmental line, not only a UN exhibit.

Since 2022 the UN has now recognised 30 flagship restoration efforts. Those 30, on UN figures, already cover nearly 20 million hectares under active restoration, with almost 75 million hectares committed by 2030, and more than 800,000 jobs attached. The new three are land-heavy additions to a list that also includes marine and forest work announced earlier this year.

Awards of this kind do not move soil. They do lock a hectare target and a partner list into a public UN file that donors and farms can be asked to match. The Cerrado’s two million hectares, the Sahel’s existing 335,000 and Saudi Arabia’s million are now the numbers against which the next COP will be able to count.