In Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, policy makers, scientists and global negotiators are gathering to convey an urgent message: The world’s rangelands, which make up about half of Earth’s land surface, are in trouble. But these same lands offer an opportunity. If, collectively, farmers and land users restore rangelands and soils, they can combat drought and preserve a major global carbon sink.
Unlike the burning of fossil fuels, everyone seems to agree that something needs to be done about them.
Ulaanbaatar is the host this year of the biennial meeting of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), one of the three U.N. conventions that emerged from a global gathering in Rio de Janeiro, held in 1992. These “Rio conventions,” which also include the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity, were designed to address interconnected global challenges, but the UNCCD, which officially launched in 1994, has earned fewer headlines and attention than the other two.
The gathering, sometimes referred to as the “land COP,” short for conference of the parties, is the only global summit of its kind to address the interwoven problems of drought, land degradation and desertification. The outcomes of this year’s event, which enters its second week Monday, could have major implications for drought management, and ultimately, for global food security and fire control.
This year’s gathering comes as drought has gripped much of the planet—nearly one-third of the world’s terrestrial lands last year, according to one study. Record-breaking heat is projected to worsen drought conditions across much of the world, including in Europe where farmers across the continent are already suffering significant harvest losses.
Major rivers are running dry. Fires are sprouting in places once reliably covered in snow, powered by parched grasses and woody fuels. In the United States, extreme heat has become the single biggest weather-driven cause of death. Successive heatwaves in Europe, where summertime temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit are becoming the norm, claimed the lives of at least 25,000 people in Europe this year as of early August.
“European countries, for over a decade, have been trying to get a soil strategy going,” said Praveena Sridhar, the scientific and policy advisor for the Save Soil movement. “But now with people with no air conditioning, and the heat, and the food actually burning up, and the forest burning, it’s becoming more and more relevant. People are able to connect the dots.”
In 2025, the European Union passed a law requiring member states to monitor and report on soil health, an important step toward addressing soil degradation there. But environmental advocates believe it lacks binding requirements to actually improve soil health through a wide range of practices, including reducing pesticide use, controlling erosion by planting certain soil-stabilizing plants or reducing the conversion of agricultural and wild lands to development.
According to the U.N., an estimated 40 percent of the world’s lands are degraded, largely from neglect, drought and over-grazing, meaning they’re less able to hold water and sequester carbon. Restoring these lands could yield enormous benefits for food production, drought mitigation and carbon storage.
Rangelands, which include both wild and managed pasture, grassland, shrubland, savannah and deserts, hold about 30 percent of the world’s soil carbon, making them a critical reservoir. Yet they get less attention from policy makers.
“Globally, when you look at rangelands, it’s a very important ecosystem, often underappreciated,” said Amy Ganguli, a professor of rangeland ecology at the University of Arizona. “It’s also a land type that has experienced tremendous challenges from invasive plant species, desertification, competing land uses and perceptions of value.”
At this year’s land COP, negotiators are planning to focus their attention on these ecosystems as part of the United Nations’ determination to make 2026 the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. The location is symbolic and strategic: 90 percent of Mongolia’s land consists of rangelands and much of the population is pastoral, living and moving with their animals.
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Donate NowThis focus on rangelands in particular, and soils more broadly, is especially hopeful for American researchers and advocates. The U.S. pulled out of the UNFCCC earlier this year and has not ratified the U.N. Convention on Biodiversity, but an American delegation is still planning to come to the table in Ulaanbaatar.
“In the U.S. climate has become very political; land conservation has not,” said Jennifer Watts, an associate scientist with the Woodwell Climate Research Center, who is attending the event. “I started viewing this as an opportunity to really engage within the U.S. on these other important issues, including climate, through the lens of land protection.”
“It’s really a win-win,” Watts added. “These ecosystems, when they’re healthy, provide all sorts of services to society and climate: We increase biodiversity, we’re able to sustain a lot more life—wildlife, insects, humans. About 60 percent, globally, of food production for humans are from these rangelands.”
As more of Earth’s surface contends with aridity in some places and excess water in others, healthy rangelands provide a moderating effect. “Any time you can stabilize the soil and plants, it just really helps mitigate against those extreme dry and wet events,” Watts said.
At the last UNCCD conference, held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2024, negotiators focused on developing a binding global protocol for tackling the expanding global crisis of drought and land aridity. A United Nations report, published during the conference, said droughts are costing countries an estimated $300 billion a year and are projected to impact three-quarters of the globe’s population by 2050.
African countries hardest hit by these conditions united behind an effort to develop the protocol, but more developed nations pushed back, saying the formal protocol would be too cumbersome and expensive. The parties agreed to resume negotiations in Ulaanbaatar.
At the event in Riyadh, negotiators also decided they would turn their attention to rangelands at the next COP.
A major aim of the agenda, organizers say, is to highlight the role of pastoralists in preserving rangelands. Roughly 500 million people depend on rangelands for their livelihoods, many of them nomadic and lacking political agency, despite the critical role they play in maintaining these climatically and environmentally important landscapes.
“Governments have also attempted to sedentarize pastoralists,” said Fiona Flintan, a senior scientist with the International Livestock Research Institute. “They see mobility and movement to be a problem that doesn’t kind of fit [with] centralization and administration processes. So the system and the people are also under pressure.”
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Facts Only
* Policy makers, scientists, and global negotiators gathered in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
* The gathering was the biennial meeting of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
* The UNCCD emerged from a global gathering in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
* Rangelands constitute about half of Earth’s land surface.
* Restoring rangelands and soils can combat drought and preserve carbon sinks.
* Drought affected nearly one-third of the world’s terrestrial lands last year.
* Record-breaking heat is projected to worsen drought conditions globally.
* Major rivers are running dry, and fires are increasing in areas once covered in snow.
* An estimated 40 percent of the world’s lands are degraded from neglect, drought, and over-grazing.
* Rangelands hold about 30 percent of the world’s soil carbon.
* The gathering aims to focus attention on rangelands as part of making 2026 the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists.
* Roughly 500 million people depend on rangelands for their livelihoods.
Executive Summary
Policy makers, scientists, and negotiators are gathering in Ulaanbaatar for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) meeting to address the challenges of drought, land degradation, and desertification in the world's rangelands, which cover about half of Earth’s land surface. This summit aims to focus attention on these ecosystems, with plans to designate 2026 as the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, a focus given Mongolia's landscape. Current global conditions are characterized by widespread drought, record-breaking heat projections, drying major rivers, and increased wildfires fueled by parched grasses. The health of rangelands is critical because they store about 30 percent of the world’s soil carbon, offering potential solutions for drought mitigation, food security, and carbon storage if restored.
The discussion moves beyond traditional climate concerns to focus on land management strategies, as evidenced by actions like the European Union's soil health monitoring law, which faces criticism for lacking binding requirements for practical soil improvement. Experts note that healthy ecosystems provide essential services, increasing biodiversity and supporting global food production, with approximately 60 percent of human food production originating from rangelands. The gathering also highlights the challenges faced by pastoralists, who depend on these lands, and the need to integrate land conservation with broader climate action, particularly for developed nations engaging with the issue in the U.S.
Full Take
The narrative frames a pivot point: shifting global focus from solely mitigating carbon emissions to valuing and restoring terrestrial ecosystems, specifically rangelands, as a primary lever for climate resilience. The juxtaposition of the urgent physical reality—drought, heat, and land degradation—with the structural inertia in policy-making (e.g., slower attention on UNCCD compared to UNFCCC) reveals a systemic misalignment between ecological necessity and political action. The emphasis on rangelands as critical carbon sinks and providers of food links environmental health directly to human security, suggesting that neglecting these landscapes is not just an ecological loss but a direct threat to global stability and food systems.
The tension exists between the scientific consensus on the beneficial role of healthy ecosystems (providing services, moderating extremes) and the political reality where formal agreements are slow to materialize or lack binding enforcement mechanisms, as seen in the critique of soil health laws. The planned focus on pastoralists introduces a layer of recognition for lived experience that often bypasses conventional high-level negotiations, challenging the established hierarchy of who counts as an actor in global environmental governance. A critical implication is whether this focused attention can overcome entrenched interests that favor centralized land use and development over the distributed, mobile systems inherent in rangeland management.
Bridge questions: If prioritizing ecosystem health over traditional geopolitical frameworks yields more resilient outcomes, what political structures are necessary to operationalize this shift? How can global negotiators effectively translate the immediate, tangible benefits of rangeland restoration into binding international protocols that overcome resistance from established economic interests? What mechanisms must be developed to ensure that the voices and needs of pastoralists, who are central to these ecosystems, are meaningfully integrated into the resulting policy framework?
Sentinel — Human
The text functions as high-quality advocacy journalism, effectively synthesizing complex environmental and policy information. While it relies on established facts, the narrative voice shows clear human intentionality in framing the data for a specific cause.