Land restoration
Land restoration refers to the process of halting degradation or rehabilitating degraded land through sustainable land management approaches and practices.
It applies across all land use types, including agricultural, forest, pastoral and other managed and natural ecosystems, and encompasses a continuum of interventions adapted to the severity of degradation and the ecological and social context in which it occurs.
Land restoration also draws on integrated and diversified production systems, land-use planning and enabling governance conditions. Within restoration continuum, the restoration of agricultural lands – including croplands, pasturelands and rangelands – is a critical priority, given their central role in food security, rural livelihoods, functioning of agrifood systems and reducing pressure on natural ecosystems.
In these contexts, restoration focuses on improving soil health, enhancing productivity and resilience, and restoring ecosystem functions and services, while maintaining the capacity of land to sustain food production, livelihoods and environmental sustainability.
Although restoration applies across all ecosystems, agricultural lands remain undervalued in global restoration efforts, which tend to prioritize areas of high biodiversity value while overlooking productive landscapes. Ensuring that agricultural lands are fully integrated into restoration efforts is therefore essential to achieving impact at scale.
At its Sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP16, Riyadh, 2024), the UNCCD adopted Decision 19/COP.16: Avoiding, reducing and reversing land and soil degradation of agricultural lands, inviting FAO and partners to provide guidance on promoting sustainable land use, responsible governance and sustainable and diverse cropping systems and crops to improve food security and nutrition in the context of climate change and environmental degradation.
FAO works with countries and partners to avoid, reduce and reverse the degradation of agricultural lands and soils through integrated land-use planning, sustainable land and water management, and diversified production systems, contributing to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 15.3 on Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN), to food security and nutrition, and to the provision of ecosystem services.
FAO advances agricultural land restoration through:
- providing guidance and tools, including frameworks, approaches and innovations that support assessment, planning, implementation and monitoring of sustainable land management promoting integrated land-use planning, sustainable land and water management and diversified production systems to address agricultural and soil land degradation and advance LDN across different production systems, accessible through the ATIO Knowledge Base.
- documenting and scaling of good practices across croplands, pasturelands and rangelands, cross-referenced with WOCAT, GLOSIS and GAEZ v5, consolidating innovative solutions, traditional knowledge and collaborative models, and supporting sustainable land use, responsible governance and diversified cropping and grazing systems in line with global commitments on LDN and the SDGs.
- advocating for integrated land-use planning (ILUP) through the Decision Support for Mainstreaming and Scaling out sustainable Land Management (DS‑SLM) initiative;
- encouraging secure and equitable tenure in line with the Voluntary Guidelines on Tenure (VGGT), and an enabling environment of coherent policies, effective governance and sustained investment; and
- promoting data- and evidence-based decision support systems for sustainable land management (DS SLM), key to addressing the challenges of land restoration. In close partnership with the UNCCD and under the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, FAO supports countries in promoting data exchange and strengthening their national capacities reporting on land and ecosystem degradation and restoration (UNCCD, Decision 4/COP.16).
