By Hanieh Moghani, Cenesta (Iran)
At UNCCD COP17 in Ulaanbaatar, land tenure was no longer treated as a peripheral social concern. It was debated as a condition for successful land restoration: people are unlikely to invest in soils, water or long-term restoration when their rights to use, manage or inherit land remain insecure. Secure tenure enables farmers, pastoralists, Indigenous Peoples and local communities to act as long-term custodians and to access services, credit and markets. COP17 built on a policy path opened at COP14 in India in 2019, when land tenure became a thematic area under the Convention, and continued through decisions 26/COP.14, 27/COP.15 and 28/COP.16.
At COP17, Parties welcomed the new Land Tenure Toolbox and considered how tenure should be integrated into Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN), national planning, the Convention’s future reporting architecture and the post-2030 Strategic Framework. The African Group, European Union and Guyana supported making tenure a pillar of that future framework, while FAO, Switzerland and others urged stronger implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (VGGT).
The negotiations also exposed political fault lines. Brazil emphasised the diversity of statutory, customary, communal and Indigenous tenure systems and linked insecurity to environmental racism. Civil society and Indigenous Peoples demanded measurable commitments, community-generated data and recognition of collective rights. Others insisted repeatedly on national law, sovereignty and voluntary approaches. Delegates struggled over whether data should be disaggregated by sex, age, race and ethnicity, and whether Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women, youth, people of African descent and persons with disabilities should be explicitly named. The compromise retained these groups in the preamble, while the operative language became broader and more qualified.
The final land-tenure decision, ICCD/COP(17)/L.18, nevertheless contains several practical advances. Parties are encouraged to integrate tenure, including customary and communal access to water, trees and grazing resources, into plans addressing desertification, land degradation and drought. They are also encouraged to convene inclusive land-tenure dialogues and may voluntarily report their outcomes. Governments and partners are invited to finance land-administration systems and national consultations linking tenure to LDN, while Parties are asked to examine differentiated impacts through disaggregated data and indicators. Countries may nominate land-tenure focal points to coordinate this work.
The Secretariat, working with FAO and other partners, is asked to expand capacity-building, advance women’s and youth tenure and resource-use rights, explore indicators for future UNCCD reporting, and begin a participatory review of tenure plans and tools beyond 2030. It must also support all four UNCCD caucuses (Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus, Local Communities Caucus, Youth Caucus, and Gender Caucus) and report progress to COP18.
Tenure also featured in the separate rangelands decision, which invites Parties to improve tenure security in accordance with the VGGT. This matters for pastoralists because privatising or fragmenting commons can destroy the mobility on which sustainable pastoral systems depend.
COP17 did not create binding tenure obligations: much of the decision is voluntary, nationally conditioned and resource-dependent. Even so, it strengthened a crucial principle: land restoration cannot be durable, inclusive, or just, unless the rights of those who live from and care for the land are secure.
