IIASA at UNCCD COP17: Advancing land restoration and resilience

On 20 August, IIASA Advancing Systems Analysis Program Director, Elena Rovenskaya, spoke at the roundtable Yielding to Nature: Exploring Market-Based Incentives for Land Degradation Neutrality, organized by the Nature and People Foundation. The session examined how voluntary certification and other market-based mechanisms could encourage businesses to prevent land degradation and invest in restoration. Rovenskaya brought a systems perspective to the discussion, emphasizing the importance of connecting credible scientific evidence with economic incentives, policy frameworks, and local implementation.

A central element of IIASA’s participation was a side event on 22 August marking the launch of the joint IIASA–UNCCD report, Restoring Land, Securing Futures: Carbon Farming in Greater Central Asia. The event brought together policymakers, researchers, financial institutions, and practitioners to explore how carbon farming could contribute to land restoration, resilient rural livelihoods, and climate action. An emerging initiative in Uzbekistan involving the UNCCD Global Mechanism and ORMEX, offers a concrete opportunity to put the findings of the Feasibility study into practice. IIASA Senior Advisor and Emeritus Research Scholar, Pradeep Monga, opened and closed the event, setting the context for the discussion and summarizing its main conclusions. More information about the event and report is available here.

On 25 August, Rovenskaya and IIASA Principal Research Scholar, Michael Obersteiner, further contributed to a discussion at the Russian Pavilion on the potential transformation of the former Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site in Kazakhstan into a large-scale climate and land-restoration project. They highlighted its potential to mobilize public and private finance, strengthen monitoring, reporting, and verification systems for rangeland ecosystems, and demonstrate the viability of carbon farming at scale.

The joint IIASA-UNCCD report was presented again on 26 August by UNCCD Programme Officer for Scientific Affairs and coauthor, Olga Andreeva, at the event Central Asia–Russia: Regional Experience and Joint Solutions for Sustainable Land Management. It was highlighted alongside other regional publications, while the wider discussion explored opportunities for cooperation on sustainable land management and restoration.

On the sidelines of COP17, the IIASA delegation held bilateral discussions with partners, including UNCCD Deputy Executive Secretary Andrea Meza Murillo. The discussions explored opportunities to deepen cooperation under the MoU between IIASA and UNCCD. In addition, the IIASA delegation also met with the GEF OFP Mongolia, the UNIDO Country Team, and Indian, Kazakhstan, and Chinese delegations.

Together, these engagements reinforced IIASA’s role in connecting science, policy, finance, and regional cooperation to advance practical solutions for addressing climate, energy, food security, and sustainability challenges.