WCC at the UN Convention to Combat Desertification COP17
Mongolia will host as the first country in east and central Asia to do so. Nearly 77 percent of its land is already degraded, according to the UN in Mongolia. Globally the figure reaches up to 40 percent, the UNCCD reports. Behind those numbers sit water shortages, thinning biodiversity, and families walking away from land that no longer feeds them.
Faith communities arrive with something other than a technical brief. Land is received as a gift held in common, and caring for it is a question of justice as much as of soil science. Churches and faith-based organizations also sit inside farming communities rather than visiting them, which makes them partners in land restoration work and not only moral voices about it. That is what the WCC mission will bring to Ulaanbaatar.
Where to find the WCC at UNCCD COP17
The WCC attended its first UNCCD conference as an accredited organization at COP16 in Riyadh in December 2024. There, it cohosted a Faith Pavilion with the Catholic Youth Network for Environmental Sustainability in Africa and the Brahma Kumaris. Both partners return for UNCCD COP17 in Ulaanbaatar.
18 August – faith-based organizations in the Green Zone
Faith-based organizations will give a 40-minute presentation in the Green Zone, the public-facing part of a UN conference, open beyond accredited participants. The G20 Global Land Initiative, a UNCCD-hosted programme working to reduce degraded land, will support the session. Wellbeing and meditation breaks will run daily from 13:00 to 13:30 in the Blue Zone, where governments negotiate, through the conference’s first week.
22 August – side event, from 8:30
A COP17 side event, “Restoring Land, Restoring Hope: Faith Communities as Partners in Land Restoration,” will run as a roundtable rather than a sequence of presentations. Speakers will take five minutes each around a single question: what is needed to scale up faith-led restoration efforts globally. Themes will include financing, technical partnerships, interfaith collaboration, and knowledge sharing. Dinesh Suna, WCC programme executive for Land, Water, and Food, will speak for the WCC. The session was submitted by CYNESA.
22 August – interfaith gathering, 16:00–20:00
The Mongolian Buddhist community, Brahma Kumaris, and the WCC will convene an interfaith gathering at the Khuree Maidar Temple, part of the Zuun Khuree Dashichoiling Monastery in Ulaanbaatar. The dialogue will follow the official COP17 theme, “Restoring Land, Restoring Hope,” in the spirit of the Talanoa approach. Talanoa is a Pacific dialogue practice that works through three questions: where are we, where do we want to go, and how do we get there. Faith leaders will sit alongside UN representatives, civil society, and conference participants. Anyone from any faith community will be welcome.
25 August – WCC and World Vision International side event, 10:30–12:00
“Faith Communities Call: Land for Life, Land for Food – Sustainable Agroecology and Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR)” will argue that land degradation belongs in the moral column and not only the technical one. Two land restoration methods will carry the session: agroecology and FMNR. Both are explained under Understand a bit more, below.
Rev. Dr Angelique Walker-Smith, WCC president from North America, will give the keynote address. The panel will draw on Indigenous knowledge, young activists working on climate and land, and organizations rooted in the communities they serve. Policy recommendations are expected to come out of the session.
A stump left standing. A watershed a village decides to share. A congregation that stops treating land as property. Small decisions, and Ulaanbaatar is where some of them will be spoken out loud in front of governments.
Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration, or FMNR. Beneath many degraded fields lie living tree stumps and root systems, sometimes called an underground forest. FMNR protects and prunes them instead of clearing or burning, so native trees regrow among the crops without nurseries, seedlings, or irrigation. The trees hold soil, restore fertility, and provide fodder and fuel. The method was developed in Niger in the 1980s and has since spread across the Sahel and beyond.
Agroecology. Agroecology brings ecological science together with farmers’ own knowledge, favouring crop diversity, seed sovereignty, and lower reliance on bought-in chemicals. It treats a farm as a living system rather than a production line. In practice that usually means more resilience to drought and less exposure to the price of inputs.
