UNCCD Reports $878 Billion Annual Cost of Land Degradation, Highlights $278 Billion Funding Gap

New financing solutions are required to close the massive gap between available and required funding to address land degradation around the world, Yasmine Fouad has stated. The UNCCD executive secretary since 2025 and former Egyptian environment minister told The Independent that public budgets alone cannot bridge the divide as aid budgets fall globally.

The latest UNCCD assessment has found that $355 billion is required annually to tackle land degradation around the world.

Only $77 billion is currently mobilised each year, with around 72 per cent of the mobilised money generated by the countries facing the largest threat. Around 22 per cent comes in the form of government aid from abroad while just six per cent is currently believed to come from private sector investment. ” Land degradation is increasing.

4 per cent of reported land around the world was classified as degraded, an increase of 4 per cent in four years. That growth represents at least 100 million hectares of formerly healthy and productive land becoming degraded every year. 3 billion people.

Each year, desertification, land degradation and drought costs impacted countries the equivalent of two per cent of their GDP, or some $878 billion. Yasmine Fouad said: “The risks of inaction are no longer environmental risks alone. Land degradation and drought are already contributing to food insecurity, supply chain disruptions, forced migration, rising inequality, and instability in vulnerable regions.

In a deeply interconnected world, no country is insulated from these impacts. ” The environment ministers of the G7 issued a communique describing desertification and drought as “systemic global challenges” and “security risk multipliers” ahead of their leaders’ summit. Their statement echoed Fouad’s call for urgent action on the escalating problem.

UNCCD is supporting watershed management projects in Ethiopia and in Kenya. It is also backing programmes encouraging farmers in the Nile Delta to plant crops that are able to withstand the increasingly salted soil. The Great Green Wall across the Sahel region of Africa is aiming to plant 100 million hectares of trees in desert-prone countries by 2030.

Some 74 drought-vulnerable countries that are low- or middle-income have now submitted drought management plans to UNCCD, which require funding to implement. The UNCCD is set to hold a Conference of Parties, known as COP17, in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia in August 2026. Finance to tackle desertification will be a key focus.