From 29th of September to 1st of October, leading experts from the ELD Working Group came together in Potsdam, Germany for a joint Writeshop with the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ).
During the Writeshop members of the ELD Working Group, the UFZ and ELD worked on a joint paper targeting the topic: Financing the Transition to Resilient Land and Water Systems. This paper will be a working paper under the Global Land Outlook 3 (GLO), currently developed by the UNCCD Science-Policy-Interface (SPI) and scheduled for publication ahead of UNCCD COP17 in Mongolia mid-2026. The working paper will also serve as a basis for a chapter to the Global Land Outlook. ELD Working Group Member and member of the SPI, Alisher Mirzabaev, will serve as a coordinating Lead Author of the GLO 3 Chapter on “Financing the Transition to Resilient Land and Water Systems”.
Against this background, members of the ELD Working Group produced outlines, structures and written paragraphs for this distinct working paper. This working paper synthesizes scientific and other knowledge on the topic and illustrates it with selected cases from around the world. It will apply a transformation perspective to the role and impact of finance and financial mechanisms in avoiding land degradation (phasing out) and enhancing resilience and restoration (phasing in).
The objectives of the paper include:
Demonstrate the urgency for transformative change through increased investment for resilient land and water systems.
Discuss the need for transformation and enabling conditions so that financial flows lead to successful transformation and in turn make investment in this transformation attractive.
Identify the investment opportunities for resilient land and water systems, discuss promising financing instruments and investments pathways and illustrate the interplay between finance and transformative change (how to enhance phasing-in and phasing-out processes)
Give decision-makers guidance on creating investment opportunities for different financial mechanisms and investments pathways with a specific view on attracting private capital
The ELD-UFZ Writeshop 2025 was organized and funded by the Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) Initiative through the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ).
It was hosted at the Research Institute for Sustainability (RIFS) in Potsdam, facilitated by Prof. Bernd Hansjürgens.
The ELD Initiative is grateful to the manifold in-kind contributions of the members of its ELD Working Group.
The ELD Writeshop 2025 contributed to the ELD Working Group’s objective “linking science to policy and practice for sustainable land management”. More information about the ELD Working Group.