Photo highlighting the activities and successes of the 'Promoting Nature-based Solutions for Land Restoration while Strengthening National Monitoring Technical Working Group in Kenya: Phase 2' project funded by UK PACT. Credit: Anthony Ochieng/CIFOR-ICRAF
By Lulseged Tamene Desta and Cargele Masso
NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 26 2026 (IPS)
Several coalitions exist today to defend the territories in which people live and work. Global leaders have long understood the importance of shared responsibility for collective security and have invested significant time in establishing networks, partnerships and alliances. In 2025, global spending on defense reached a record $2.9 trillion .
But the global community is increasingly recognizing that today’s gravest existential risks arise from a war being waged against nature itself – and our defenses are woefully fragmented and underfunded. The world is investing only about $220 billion a year for nature-based solutions, compared to $7.3 trillion for nature-negative activities.
This is not just a discrete, isolated environmental concern. The triple planetary crises of land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change are worsening food insecurity, water scarcity and ecosystem collapse, threatening millions of lives.
Collectively, the impact of the ongoing assault on nature is amplifying conflict, worsening migration, driving inflation higher, and fomenting geopolitical instability. Unless restoration and sustainable management of resources is in place, the world is expected to lose more than US$23 trillion by 2050 , while halting this trend would cost around $4.6 trillion.
Many solutions to these interconnected crises exist but have been ineffective to date. Limited coordination and collaboration between countries, sectors and disciplines, as well as insufficient resources and short-term approaches to long-term challenges, mean we are far behind the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Despite compelling evidence of the costs of degradation, investment remains far below what is needed because opportunities are rarely presented as credible, investable propositions.
To change this, two things must happen. First, governments, international agencies, academia and civil society must unite through a grand coalition to bring together those currently working in isolation to achieve greater impact than the sum of their parts – a kind of mutual pact to protect nature.
Photo highlighting the activities and successes of the ‘Promoting Nature-based Solutions for Land Restoration while Strengthening National Monitoring Technical Working Group in Kenya: Phase 2’ project funded by UK PACT. Credit: Anthony Ochieng/CIFOR-ICRAF
And second, this grand coalition must also engineer a funding paradigm shift from focusing on environmental challenges to investing in the many opportunities of conservation and restoration.
The ongoing UN COP17 desertification talks in Mongolia, where the theme is “Restoring Land, Restoring Hope”, is the perfect opportunity to progress this.
Evidence shows that integrated approaches to address landscape degradation solve multiple interconnected challenges.
For example, investment in soil and water conservation in the Adarsha watershed in southern India has been found to improve water availability, agricultural productivity, and rural livelihoods. Analysis showed that yields of maize intercropped with pigeonpea increased by 148% while households in the watershed were less affected by droughts compared to those in the non-watershed area.
In Kenya and Tanzania, the adoption of Participatory Rangeland Management improved rangeland condition and resilience to climate shocks for more than 90% of participating communities.
Despite evidence from these successes, these interventions are not being invested in and applied at the scale needed to transform the world’s food, land and water systems in ways that can build long-term, far-reaching resilience.
Countries, donors, financing institutions and civil society must come together in a grand coalition to direct the coordination, governance and investment necessary to tackle these crises where they all interconnect: at the landscape level.
A grand coalition would offer a dedicated focal point to integrate and advance the UN’s goals for climate, biodiversity and land degradation, allowing for stronger coordination and shaping the global agenda for informed decision-making. Critically, the coalition would lead the redirection away from ineffective, siloed solutions and the self-defeating environmental trade-offs they create.
A grand coalition would also create a platform for establishing the rigorous systems of governance essential to achieving global goals for nature, including fair and inclusive land tenure and governance over water systems. Understanding the true cost of landscape governance and inaction is instrumental for adequate investments.
Lastly, a grand coalition would gather the evidence to help shift the emphasis of finance for nature towards investments that benefit everyone. By identifying a menu of options for turning grand challenges into grand opportunities, the coalition would unlock the financing from banks, donors, philanthropies and other development funders needed to scale interventions globally.
The UNCCD COP17 talks in Mongolia is not just an opportunity to address the challenges facing land. It’s a moment to foster unity around a shared threat to all of our territories. CGIAR and its partners will play its part by developing an investment plan to anchor greater coordination in collaboration with the grand coalition of action for shared human and planetary outcomes.
Landscapes are where our greatest environmental and human challenges today are playing out, from declining biodiversity to the deforestation driving climate change, to increasing levels of food insecurity.
Investing in multifunctional landscapes through a unified global coalition, therefore, is not simply an environmental imperative for the world, but also a strategic one. Galvanizing support for landscape-centered solutions can simultaneously reduce future risks and strengthen economies and communities.
A global coalition for restoring and protecting landscapes would recognize a defining reality of the 21st century: protecting nature is fundamental for protecting us all.
Dr. Lulseged Tamene Desta , is Director of the CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes Science Program
Cargele Masso , is Director of the CGIAR’s Environmental Health and Biodiversity Impact Area Platform
IPS UN Bureau
Grand Planetary Challenges Need a Grand Coalition to Solve Them
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