In much of Africa, agriculture continues to depend on rainfall and the direct quality of the soil. When the topsoil loses organic matter, nutrients, and structure, the crops retain less water and respond poorly to heat. The farmer can sow in the same plot and expend the same effort, but harvest less because the productive base has already been weakened.

The FAO estimates that 1,7 billion people worldwide live in areas where degradation caused by human activity has already reduced agricultural yields. In sub-Saharan Africa, pockets of poverty and productivity losses overlap across several territories, making crop failures especially dangerous where families have less savings, access to credit, irrigation, and social protection.

The next effect appears in the market. Fewer locally produced grains, legumes, vegetables, or forage mean greater dependence on external purchases, long transport distances, and scarce foreign currency. For countries already burdened by debt and the cost of imports, a soil crisis can translate into fiscal pressure.

For families, it quickly becomes a choice between quantity, quality, and final price. Degradation pushes producers towards decisions that can worsen the problem. Without technical assistance or alternative income sources, entire families may cultivate fragile slopes, shorten fallow periods, remove vegetation, or use the land to its limit to compensate for immediate losses.

This short-term survival increases erosion and depletion, closing a cycle in which the new season begins with less margin. Restoring agricultural soils therefore means recovering economic capacity. Vegetation cover, crop rotation, agroforestry, proper water management and replenishment of organic matter can reduce losses and provide stability to harvests.

At COP17, the African test will be less about the number of pledges approved and more about the ability to get these practices to smallholder farmers with lasting funding.

Water scarcity and land degradation reinforce each other. Compacted soil or soil poor in organic matter absorbs less rain, loses more through runoff, and stores less moisture for dry periods. When heavy rains arrive, the water can run off the surface quickly, causing erosion and disappearing before it can recharge aquifers, seasonal rivers, or small reservoirs.

On the continent, this relationship directly impacts agriculture, human food supply, and livestock, because a large part of production depends on rainfall. A prolonged drought not only affects the amount of water available; it forces women, children, and herders to travel greater distances and concentrates people and animals in more contested areas.

Agriculture accounts for more than 70% of the world's freshwater withdrawals, demonstrating how the competition for this resource is linked to food. In dry African regions, expanding irrigation without protecting basins, soils, and aquifers may only transfer the crisis. The solution requires using less water per unit produced and conserving water retention capacity.

Therefore, drought resilience occupies a central place at COP17. The discussion can no longer be limited to emergency response after wells dry up and livestock die. Drought plans, climate information, water storage, wetland restoration, protected basins, and preventative financing are tools to reduce the cost before the lack of rain turns into an emergency.

For Africa, water policy will have to recognize that restoring the land is also about managing security. Where the soil recovers vegetation cover, infiltration, and fertility, rainfall tends to remain useful for longer. This does not eliminate droughts, but it reduces vulnerabilities. The value of COP17 depends on the ability to link water infrastructure, agriculture, conservation, and territorial planning into a single strategy.

Pastures are essential infrastructure for millions of African families who depend on livestock, milk, meat, and trade. When vegetation loses cover and diversity, herds find less food and travel greater distances. This displacement increases animal fatigue, reduces production, and raises the risk of conflicts over water and grazing areas.

The conference takes place during the International Year of Pastures and Shepherds, which highlights the importance of the topic. Pastures cover more than half of the Earth's surface and support around 500 million people worldwide. In Africa, protecting these areas means recognizing mobile production systems that depend on flexible access to land, not fences.

When land degrades, pastoral mobility tends to increase precisely when traditional routes become narrower. Agriculture encroaches on passage areas, infrastructure cuts off corridors, and borders can restrict movement.

Without negotiated rules between communities, farmers, and authorities, the demand for pasture and water can transform environmental pressure into an economic, territorial, and political dispute. There is also the issue of prices. A herd that loses weight, fertility, or access to water produces less meat and milk and arrives at markets in poorer condition.

Animal mortality destroys savings because, in many communities, livestock functions as an asset, income source, and emergency reserve. Pasture degradation thus enters the household economy before it even appears in the statistics. The solution requires combining land use rights, ecological restoration, and services adapted to mobility.

Pastoralists need climate information, water sources, animal health information, markets, and mechanisms to negotiate access without violence. If COP17 succeeds in elevating pastureland to the level of agriculture and water in funding decisions, Africa will have the opportunity to protect its structurally neglected rural economies.

Food prices don't start on the shelves. They start in the land, with rain, fuel, transportation, and the quantity that reaches the market. When degraded soils reduce agricultural yields and drought increases the cost of water or feed, the cost rises along the chain. In import-dependent economies, a disruption can combine with volatility and increase the bill.

African vulnerability is serious because the continent entered 2026 with a fragile food base. In 2025, approximately 309 million people faced hunger, and 56,6% of the population experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. These figures result not only from land degradation but also demonstrate the limited resources available when drought or crop failure affects families.

For an urban family, the crisis can arrive without any visible contact with the countryside. Bread prices increase, flour weighs more heavily on the budget, meat disappears from the week, and the variety of the diet decreases. For a rural family that is a net buyer of food, the blow is twofold: they produce less to sell and pay more for what they need to buy.

This is where restoration ceases to be a policy detached from the consumer. Improving fertility, reducing erosion, conserving water in the soil, and diversifying crops can make supply less vulnerable to shocks. They don't guarantee prices by decree, but they help reduce losses. Food security begins with the ability to produce without destroying the basis for subsequent production.

COP17 will also have to address the issue of unequal funding. Restoring soils costs money before generating returns, and many producers cannot wait years for the benefits. Adequate credit, insurance, rural extension services, and public investment are crucial to ensure that the transition does not fall on those who already have less. Without this bridge, restoration remains trapped in official plans.

Migration linked to land degradation rarely has a single cause. A family might leave because the harvest failed, livestock died, debt mounted, and local jobs disappeared all at once. Drought then acts as a multiplier of pre-existing vulnerabilities. The movement can be temporary, seasonal, or permanent, and often begins within the same country.

As this movement grows, capital cities and small towns receive people seeking work, water, education, and security. If urban growth is not accompanied by housing, services, and employment, the pressure shifts from the countryside to the peripheral neighborhoods. The land problem then becomes apparent in rent, transportation, sanitation, and competition for low-paying jobs.

In the border areas of the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, the struggle for resources can also intersect with armed conflict, fragile governance, and existing displacements. It would be wrong to automatically attribute the violence to drought. What degradation does is reduce bargaining power, make resources scarce, and increase the cost of maintaining lives and economies in pressured territories.

There is also a macroeconomic cost. Degradation reduces productivity, destroys rural assets, increases assistance needs, and can weaken public revenues in agricultural economies. At the same time, restoring land and preparing for droughts requires investment.

The UNCCD estimates that restoration and drought resilience goals require approximately $355 billion per year until 2030. It is within this context that the funding discussed at COP17 should be understood as a policy of stability. Each hectare restored can protect production, water, incomes, and family assets.

But the money will only be effective if it reaches projects that are measured, maintained, and governed with local participation. For Africa, restoring the land means reducing the likelihood of an environmental crisis deciding who leaves when they should stay.

This COP17 opens in Ulaanbaatar with a choice that goes beyond the environment. If the soil continues to lose fertility and water, Africa will pay the price with smaller harvests, weaker herds, more expensive food, strained cities, and families forced to relocate.

The continent already grapples with widespread hunger and tight public budgets, so degradation adds further risk where financial and social resources are already limited, particularly in rural communities dependent on rainfall and pastureland.

The decisive outcome of the conference will be whether governments can transform diplomacy into funded restoration, drought prevention, protected pastures, and less vulnerable food systems.

Degraded land is a slow crisis, but its effects quickly reach the plate and the pocket. For Africa, restoring it within the framework of COP17 means defending productive territory, food sovereignty, and the possibility of remaining at home without each dry season becoming a decision about whether to leave or stay.