Halting land degradation and restoring land will be critical as the world faces up to the intertwined challenges of ending hunger, malnutrition, and poverty. To varying degrees, land degradation affects 20-40 percent of the global land area undermining the wellbeing of 3.2 billion people. Urgent action is needed to reverse the pervasive impacts of land degradation to secure food and water resources. 

The importance of secure tenure to motivate good land stewardship, both at subsistence level and large scales, has gained precedence in the past years. In 2019, the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) adopted a landmark decision on land tenure. While the UNCCD stands as the only multilateral environmental agreement to explicitly address the issue of land tenure, actors such as the CFS have been actively promoting responsible governance of tenure for nearly a decade. 

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forest in the context of National Food Security (VGGT). This side event will celebrate the occasion, highlight the achievements made and explore how integrating the VGGT into land restoration initiatives can re-energize momentum to enhance tenure security and unlock multiple benefits for food security, poverty reduction, women‘s empowerment and the prevention of natural resource conflicts. 

The event will launch the technical guide on integrating the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forest in the context of National Food Security (VGGT) into land degradation neutrality (LDN) in all 6 UN languages, produced jointly by UNCCD and FAO. The technical guide was well received by the Parties to the UNCCD at COP15, where countries strengthened their commitment on land tenure and called for concerted efforts to further implementation at the national level. The side event will dialogue on these efforts can increase tenure security, particularly for the most vulnerable people and communities, and opens a new chapter in the ongoing efforts to implement the VGGT in the context of desertification, land degradation and drought. It will also explore the further uptake of the Technical Guide through a standardized module on tenure integrated within the WOCAT SLM global database and data storylines by Land Portal Foundation.