The 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17) opened Monday in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, running through 28 August under the theme “Restoring Land, Restoring Hope.” It brings together delegates from the convention’s 197 parties, alongside heads of state, ministers, financial institutions and civil society groups, to negotiate the next phase of global action on land degradation and drought.
Mongolia is hosting as the first country in East or Central Asia to convene a UNCCD COP, and its own case, nearly 77% of its territory degraded, sets the tone. But for TMG’s audience the relevant thread is not Mongolia. It is what the summit means for the Sahel, where land degradation is not a projection but a lived condition: close to 80% of the region’s land is already degraded, an estimated 33 million people face food insecurity, and temperatures are projected to rise 3 to 5 degrees Celsius by 2050.
That backdrop is why the Great Green Wall, the pan-African initiative to restore a corridor from Senegal to Djibouti, sits at the center of what West African delegations will be pushing for in Ulaanbaatar. The initiative’s 2030 target is to restore 100 million hectares across the Sahel. Financing tells a harder story. The 2021 One Planet Summit mobilized roughly $14.2 billion in pledges toward the Wall, against an estimated $33 billion needed to complete it. Regional stakeholders met in Djibouti in May to take stock of 2025 implementation and align 2026 priorities specifically ahead of this COP, an indication that financing delivery, not new pledges, is the more pressing question this time.
The programme gives a concrete marker to watch. Senegal’s national reforestation agency has a side event scheduled at COP17 on its Great Green Wall Integrator Programme, framed around mobilizing partnerships and investment for land restoration and community resilience. A separate session from the Sahara and Sahel Observatory addresses moving from land degradation neutrality commitments to what it terms transformative investment. Whether these sessions produce disbursement commitments, rather than further coordination statements, is the distinction that will determine if this COP moves past the pattern of previous editions.
What TMG should track over the two weeks: any new financing figures announced for the Great Green Wall specifically, whether West African governments secure commitments distinct from broader UNCCD pledges, and whether the newly referenced Great Green Wall Observatory produces verifiable data on hectares restored to date, since progress reporting on the initiative has historically lagged its funding announcements. Outcomes from a COP are provisional until translated into signed financing agreements; TMG should treat any headline figure from Ulaanbaatar as an announcement to verify, not a confirmed disbursement.