UNCCD COP17 Opens in Mongolia as Land Restoration and Drought Resilience Enter Two Weeks of Negotiations

The seventeenth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification opened in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on 17 August 2026. The conference runs through 28 August under the theme of restoring land and rebuilding hope.

The meeting is expected to bring together the Convention's 197 parties, alongside representatives from governments, business, civil society, science, youth, Indigenous Peoples, pastoralists and smallholder farmers.

The formal agenda treats land degradation, drought, water resources, rangelands and food systems as interconnected governance issues rather than isolated environmental projects.

UNCCD says land degradation affects as much as 40 percent of the world's land, with consequences for food production, water resources, livelihoods and economic stability.

In host country Mongolia, approximately 77 percent of the land is affected by degradation, placing the conference directly within the realities facing dryland regions.

The two-week meeting will examine how land restoration and drought resilience programmes can become implementable, investable and continuously traceable action.

For business, land and water risks are becoming more directly connected to agricultural supply chains, nature-related risk, raw-material security and long-term operational resilience.

Key issues to watch include whether parties can establish concrete implementation mechanisms and financing arrangements, and whether restoration outcomes can be supported by comparable and verifiable evidence.