Environment › Conservation initiatives › Afforestation and restoration
Land degradation and desertification
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification met for its 17th Conference of Parties in Mongolia in August 2026. India's argument there was that drought is a predictable risk to plan for rather than a disaster to relieve, and it brought a record to show for it: 21.76 million hectares under restoration, against a Bonn Challenge commitment of 26 million hectares by 2030. The same argument runs through India's drylands.
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2016: the importance of the Convention to Combat Desertification
- Prelims 2014: international agreements that have a bearing on biodiversity
The Convention
- UNCCD was adopted in 1994 and is one of the three Rio Conventions, alongside the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
- It has 197 parties.
- Its central goal is land degradation neutrality.
- India's Bonn Challenge commitment is to bring 26 million hectares of degraded and deforested land under restoration by 2030.
Why India's drylands matter
- Rainfed farming covers 43 per cent of India's net sown area and grows about 40 per cent of its food.
- India's open natural ecosystems, its grasslands, savannas, scrub, ravines and deserts, are still recorded in many places as wastelands, and lose out in land use decisions accordingly.
The research institute behind the drylands work
- The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) was founded in 1972 at Patancheru near Hyderabad, and is one of the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) centres.
Watershed development, the instrument
34 million haCovered by watershed projects
2 million haBrought under protective irrigation
Nearly 6 millionFarmers benefited
About 2:1Benefit-cost ratio of completed projects
- A watershed project treats a whole catchment so that rain is held where it falls, which is what protective irrigation later draws on.
What has happened
12 Sep 2026
The Dryland Congress 2026, convened by ICRISAT, adopted the Delhi Declaration on Drylands.
- The Department of Land Resources put the next phase of drylands work on resilient institutions, digital public infrastructure and community action.
- WDC-PMKSY reported its twelve year record alongside the Congress.
PIB, 13 Sep 2026: Dryland Congress 2026 Concludes with Delhi Declaration on Drylands (opens in a new tab) · PIB, 11 Sep 2026: Drylands Must be Reimagined through Resilient Institutions, Digital Public Infrastructure and Community Action: Secretary, Department of Land Resources (DoLR) (opens in a new tab)
26 Aug 2026
UNCCD COP17 met in Mongolia with drought at the centre of it.
- India argued that drought be planned for as a predictable risk, with catchment forests restored so that a landscape holds its water for longer.
- It launched its first Guide to Grasslands and Other Open Natural Ecosystems.
- Its second Bonn Challenge progress report put 21.76 million hectares under restoration between 2011 and 2020.
- It named the Green Credit Programme and sovereign green bonds as ways of financing restoration.
PIB, 26 Aug 2026: India's second Bonn Challenge progress report and restoration finance at COP17 (opens in a new tab) · The Hindu, 26 Aug 2026: UNCCD COP17 in Mongolia focuses on drought resilience (opens in a new tab)