“This year, World Environment Day will direct the world’s gaze to three perilous, though often-overlooked, challenges: land degradation, desertification and drought,” said Elizabeth Mrema, UN Envrionment Programme Deputy Executive Director. She spoke at the campaign launch for this year’s World Environment Day (WED) in Riyadh, capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. “Our priority now must be on restoring ecosystems – on replanting our forests, on rewetting our marshes, on reviving our soils,” Mrema added.  

The 2024 World Environment Day (WED) campaign will launch on 28 April in Riyadh, capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This year, the Kingdom is hosting WED with a focus on land restoration, desertification and drought resilience.



One of the most effective ways to restore degraded land, halt desertification and build drought resilience is through ecosystem restoration. And the beauty of restoration is that it can happen at any scale. This means everyone has a role to play.  



As the campaign kicks off, get involved in this year’s WED. Register your restoration event or activity and receive a certificate of participation.

Every second, an equivalent of four football fields of healthy land becomes degraded, adding up to 100 million hectares every year. 

Engaging present and future generations is more important than ever to halt and reverse these alarming trends and meet global commitments to restore 1 billion hectares of degraded land by 2030.  

The theme chosen for this year's Desertification and Drought Day – United for Land: Our Legacy. Our Future – seeks to mobilize society in support of sustainable land stewardship. Taking place on June 17, also the 30th anniversary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) – the sole legally binding international treaty on land management and drought; one of the three Rio Conventions alongside climate change and biodiversity. 

Read more about Desertification and Drought Day 

Desertification is one of the biggest environmental threats of our time. It refers to land drying up due to reduced rainfall, the expansion of agriculture, poor irrigation practices, deforestation and overgrazing.  

Climate change is exacerbating desertification: right now, around 2 billion people live on drylands vulnerable to desertification, which could displace an estimated 50 million people by 2030. 

If people cannot grow food, they will need to move to an area where they can, increasing the risk of desertification, and having negative effects on landscapes, wildlife and human health.  



Read more about desertification here. 

Today, 2.4 billion people live in water-stressed countries, defined as nations that withdraw 25 per cent or more of their renewable freshwater resources to meet water demand. 

Hard hit regions include Southern and Central Asia, and North Africa, where the situation is considered critical. Even countries with highly developed infrastructure, like the United States, are seeing water levels drop to record lows. 

Along with climate change, the crisis is being fed by unchecked urbanization, rapid population growth, pollution and land development. Water shortfalls already affect everything from food security to biodiversity and in the coming years, they are poised to become more common. 

Read the full story 

Mauritania’s battle against encroaching desertification, which has damaged ecosystems and endangered species, has received a timely boost with the news that 200,000 hectares will be turned into a protected area to support biodiversity in the country. 

The project, implemented by UNEP and supported by the Global Environment Facility, will create a new protected area in the district of Adrar, a former crossroads for medieval salt and date traders, known for its striking desert landscapes and UNESCO-listed fortified towns of Chinguetti and Oudane. 

Read the full report 

To tackle the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss, the countries of Africa’s Sahel region are mounting an epic response: a “wall” of restored forests and lands stretching more than 8,000 kilometers across the continent. 

The Great Green Wall is a spectacular initiative designed to help people and nature cope with the growing impact of the climate emergency and the degradation of vital ecosystems, and to keep the Sahara Desert from spreading deeper into one of the world’s poorest regions. 

Read more about the Great Green Wall 

The Republic of Korea will host World Environment Day 2025, with the focus on ending plastic pollution.  

The Korean city of Busan will host the Fifth Session of the Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee on plastic pollution in November 2024. The aim of the process is to finalize a global plastics treaty which ends plastic pollution.  

The world produces more than 430 million tonnes of plastic annually, two-thirds of which are short-lived products that soon become waste, filling the ocean and, often, working their way into the human food chain.

As Riziki Bwanake walks along the Tana River Delta, the dry, dusty earth crunches beneath her feet. This part of eastern Kenya was once lush, home to a rich expanse of mangroves and an abundance of fish. 

But the sheer weight of the human demands on this fragile ecosystem, exacerbated by a devastating drought, has left the delta parched. Bwanake, and others in her community are trying to change that, working with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to plant 100,000 native trees. Their goal: stem the tide of desertification and turn the land from brown into green. 

These challenges aren’t limited to the Tana River Delta. Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti and Ethiopia are currently grappling with some of the worst heat and driest weather since satellite record keeping began. 

Read the full article 

Yacouba Sawadogo, 76, has been a farmer for much of his life, tending a plot of land in a semi-arid stretch of central Burkina Faso. But in the 1980s, that way of life almost came to an end.

Severe droughts triggered soil erosion and land degradation, crippling farms across Burkina Faso and much of Western Africa.

“People were leaving, and the animals and trees were dying,” Sawadogo recalled. “We had to look at a new way to farm.”

Amid the crisis, Sawadogo developed a modified version of a traditional farming practice known as Zai that helps crops survive on minimal rainfall.

The technique has revolutionized farming in much of Africa. Sawadogo – a UNEP Champion of the Earth – is part of a global effort to slow the process of desertification taking place everywhere from Chile to China. 

Read the full article.