From Davos to COP17: building the business case for land

Land degradation has become one of the defining business risks of the decade — yet it remains sidelined in most business sectors. While climate volatility, supply-chain disruption and resource scarcity have made their way to boardroom conversations, a silent driver behind many of these pressures continues to be underestimated: land degradation. And yet, declining soil productivity, water shortages and ecosystems no longer able to absorb shocks are already translating into higher costs, operational disruption and growing fragility across value chains.

Land restoration sits uncomfortably between sustainability, operations and finance — owned by everyone, and therefore by no one, at the very moment when inaction is already affecting the bottom line. Companies face an opportunity to help shape rules, markets and investment conditions now being defined. With three UN COPs ahead in 2026 — on land (UNCCD), climate (UNFCCC) and biodiversity (CBD) — businesses can move beyond pledges, and take part in designing governance.

Against this backdrop, Business4Land Champions Council was launched by the UNCCD to bring business into the land governance agenda and to explore how land restoration can move from a shared concern to an investable asset.

Land has become a strategic business issue, to all sectors

We live on land and we live off land — yet we continue to run the global economy as if land were an infinite input. In reality, land degradation is already happening at scale: around 2 billion hectares of once-productive land are now degraded — an area roughly twice the size of China. And degradation is accelerating: the IPBES assessment estimates that around 12 million hectares are lost each year to degradation, impacting the wellbeing and livelihoods of at least 3.2 billion people.

For business, this is not an abstract environmental trend; it is a growing operational and financial exposure. Land degradation undermines agricultural yields, increases flood and drought risk, disrupts supply chains, and raises the cost of basic inputs (from food commodities to natural fibres, feed and fuels). The economic signal is already clear: IPBES estimates the loss of ecosystem services from land degradation costs more than 10% of annual global GDP. And because the economy is deeply intertwined with nature, the vulnerability is systemic: the World Economic Forum has estimated that over half of global GDP (US$44 trillion) is moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services — meaning land, water and biodiversity risks increasingly translate into business risks.

Land is also a climate issue hiding in plain sight. Agriculture, forestry and other land use contribute around 20–24% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, yet the land agenda still struggles to receive commensurate attention. At the same time, land is one of the most powerful leverage points we have: soils and terrestrial vegetation store several times more carbon than the atmosphere — meaning that protecting and restoring ecosystems is a material part of resilience and mitigation strategies. As Dr. Osama Faqeeha – Deputy  Minister of Environment, COP16 Presidency, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – put it during his remarks in Davos this year (see video below), land degradation is “creeping like a cancer” — but it is also one that can still be reversed with the right incentives and investment.

The good news — and the core of the business case — is that land restoration is an investable opportunity with measurable returns. Materials from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) synthesize evidence showing that every US$1 invested in land restoration can generate between US$7 and US$30 in economic returns, through improved ecosystem services, productivity, and risk reduction. In other words: restoring land is not only about safeguarding natural capital; it is about protecting balance sheets, securing supply, and rebuilding long-term competitiveness in an era of climate volatility and resource stress.

The Business4Land Champions Council: 10 champions, 8 industries, 5 continents

Business4Land (B4L) was created to bring the private sector into the UNCCD’s land and drought agenda in a structured, action-oriented way — moving beyond declarations toward implementation and investment.

In Davos in 2024, UNCCD launched the Business4Land initiative. Hosted by InTent, the UNCCD gathered corporate leaders, financiers, policymakers and practitioners around a simple premise: land health is a foundation for economic resilience .Two years later, that momentum translated into a scaffolding for action: UNCCD officially launched the Business4Land Champions’ Council to set business standards on land restoration.

The Champions’ Council is deliberately small by design: a group of 10 senior business leaders selected to act as an “advocacy body” and a credible peer voice for land restoration within and across industries.

The founding champion companies are Nexira, Suzano, Gut & Bösel, Patagonia Provisions / B. Cameron Consulting, Olam Group, Reservas Votorantim, Genesis Soil Health, EY, Envision Energy, and LVMH — spanning eight industries and operating across five continents.

This composition signals that land restoration is not a “single-sector” issue (i.e agriculture only), but a cross-cutting resilience and competitiveness agenda — from raw materials and supply chains to finance, risk and consumer markets.

The Council’s three objectives: advocacy, innovation, influence

In practical terms, the Champions’ Council is built around three outcomes — each designed to shift what businesses do, what markets reward, and what policy enables:

1.Advocacy: make land restoration a core business priority — and reinforce the message that restoration is an investment, not a cost.
2.Innovation: use the champions as a testbed for what works — piloting and scaling land- and water-positive business practices that can be replicated across sectors and value chains, and demonstrated as commercially viable.
3.Influence: connect business leaders directly to policymakers — translating on-the-ground corporate constraints and solutions into frameworks for land restoration (standards, incentives, investment conditions, disclosure expectations).

Next steps to COP17 in Ulaanbaatar: sector roadmaps and visible business leadership

From its launch in Davos (January 2026) to COP17 (August 2026), the Council’s work is organised around a simple arc: visibility → mobilisation → sector roadmaps → policy alignment, culminating in a Business4Land moment at COP17.

Concretely, the plan is to:

• Develop individualised advocacy plans for champions (where they will speak, which convenings they will target, and what “asks” they will carry into their sectors);
• Mobilise additional companies to join the Business4Land initiative through a Call to Action with practical guidance and peer examples; and
• Build sector-specific roadmaps so that by COP17, the agenda is tailored to the investment and operational levers of each industry.

This roadmap leads to COP17 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, the global forum to accelerate action on desertification, land degradation and drought.

From awareness to action and from pilots to scale

Land degradation is no longer a side topic for sustainability teams. It is a competitiveness issue, a resilience issue, and a capital allocation issue. The direction of travel is clear: markets are moving toward tighter expectations on land use, water stewardship, and nature-related risk — while physical impacts (yield volatility, water stress, supply disruption) are already reshaping business fundamentals.

For companies that have not yet engaged, the invitation is straightforward: join Business4Land by signing UNCCD’s Call to Action, and commit to concrete steps to reduce your land footprint and contribute to restoration and drought resilience. UNCCD’s team will support participating companies in identifying credible actions and will provide visibility within the initiative’s coalition.

If your company depends on land (spoiler: it does), this is the moment to move from statements to substance: bring a real case study, a real project pipeline, and a real set of sector levers. The coalition needs corporate examples that prove what is feasible — and that help shift the “business environment” so land restoration becomes the rational choice, not the heroic one.

Sign the Business4Land Call to Action and contribute your company’s land regeneration case study, helping arrive at COP17 with bankable projects, clear policy signals and risk tools ready to deploy at scale.