AGENDA

  • Day 2: Wednesday, 20 December
  • Room: Nairobi 1 - 2

Land degradation, migration and resilience

Landscape restoration
Nairobi 1 - 2

Session Description
Commitments to address land degradation have been made at different levels, through the SDGs, the UNCCD framework, the UNFCCC, the GPFLR, AFR 100 and LAC20x20, among others. These ongoing efforts help to address the recurring crisis in the drylands, but the challenge is to ensure that the solution they provide is not only temporary.

Permanently reducing the vulnerability of the people living in drylands will require sustained efforts to attack the underlying causes of the problem. If current trends continue, higher population density, combined with increasing interest from outside investors in large scale commercial agriculture and extractive industries, will put additional pressure on the fragile natural resources base of drylands, pushing it in some cases beyond its regenerative capacity.

As competition for resources intensifies, conflicts over land, water, feed, are likely to multiply, reducing the ability of governments, development agencies, and local communities to manage the impact of the many shocks.  The potential development impacts, including in terms of resilience, growth, stability and migrations, vs. the cost of too little action, call for efforts to be transformative and to be expanded at landscape scale.

Key ingredients of such efforts deal with implementation of large programs involving different sectors, engaging private sector, scaling up financing, and promoting capacity building and knowledge exchanges. These also require taking improved collaborations to take advantage of the respective contributions of different stakeholders and institutions for integrated landscape approaches. In that perspective, the World Bank can, along with partners, further mobilize its capacity and experience to support countries to fight land degradation and increase resilience.

Session Objectives

This moderated panel discussion organized by the Word Bank Group and partners will:

  • stress the need for large scale, integrated action for impactful results;
  • draw on lessons to identify key ingredients for success;
  • identify opportunities and requirements for transformative change;
  • highlight the role of the World Bank Group and partners in supporting countries drive transformative actions.

 Session Format

This will be a 90-minute moderated panel discussion.