IFLA releases LANDSCAPE MUST COME FIRST Position Statement at COP17

As world leaders gather in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) COP17 under the theme “Restoring Land. Restoring Hope,” the International Federation of Landscape Architects (IFLA) has issued a vital message to governments, financiers, and non-state actors: LANDSCAPE MUST COME FIRST.

According to IFLA, the ongoing global crisis involving degraded soils, increasing drought, and vanishing rangelands is primarily due to a structural failure in design, resulting from human systems that are directly at odds with natural ecological processes.

“Our message at COP17 is the same fundamental truth we carried from Belém: landscape must come first. Desertification is not a remote problem for drylands alone; it is a design failure with consequences for food, water and migration everywhere. We urge Parties to move beyond siloed land-degradation targets and put landscape-led, nature-based solutions at the very heart of every National Action Programme.”

Dr Bruno Marques, IFLA President

Without healthy, hydrated, and living land, IFLA representatives warned, there can be no long-term food security, drought resilience, or viable future for pastoralist communities reliant on fragile ecosystems.

As part of the statement IFLA calls on all parties to advance National Action Programmes and the COP17 Action Agenda through the following:

• Integrate Landscape as Critical Infrastructure for Land Restoration: Move beyond degradation-only targets. We call for National Action Programmes that embed Land Degradation Neutrality as implementable, place-based restoration design; scaling ‘sponge’ catchment approaches that rehydrate degraded drylands and manage drought and flood together.
• Recognise Pastoral and Indigenous Knowledge as Living Infrastructure: Champion co-design over imposition. Traditional and Indigenous knowledge of pastoral landscapes and rangeland mobility is proven drought-resilience infrastructure and must be formally integrated into National Action Programmes and drought governance.
• Finance the Foundation and Secure Land Tenure: Redirect global finance toward scalable, locally-led landscape restoration, and secure equitable land rights, particularly for women, youth, Indigenous Peoples and pastoralist communities, as the precondition for durable restoration.
• Bridge the Urban–Rural Continuum: Recognise that peri-urban green infrastructure, agroecology and healthy soils relieve pressure on degraded rural land and build food security across the landscape system, not just within city limits.
• Mandate Metrics and Monitoring for Implementation: Move from design to delivery. We urge all Parties to translate LDN commitments into project briefs with defined metrics, such as hectares restored, cubic metres of water retained, or increases in soil and biodiversity indices, and to embed monitoring into every restoration investment.

IFLA has invited all stakeholders, from governments and financiers to private industry and civil society, to join IFLA, endorse its statement, and champion landscape-led restoration as the only viable path to restoring land and hope.

You can read the Statement on the IFLA website at https://www.iflaworld.com/newsblog/ifla-position-statement-cop17