Restoring Land, Redirecting Finance: Repurposing Public Support for a Just Rural Transition

About The Event

Join us at UNCCD COP17 for an urgent high-level dialogue on how transforming agricultural finance can restore our lands, protect soil health, and secure global food systems. Public support for agriculture is one of the most powerful yet misaligned levers in global food systems. Currently, less than 5% of agricultural subsidies are tied to conservation or public goods, while a significant portion actively fuels the land degradation, soil depletion, and rural poverty that UNCCD exists to address.

Repurposing this finance is not merely a technical adjustment; it is a critical matter of political will and social justice. The current financial architecture systematically excludes the smallholder farmers, pastoralists, and Indigenous communities who rely on healthy soils and bear the heaviest burdens of land degradation.

Positioned to bridge Food Systems Day with Finance Day at UNCCD COP17, “Restoring Land, Redirecting Finance” makes the explicit case that soil health cannot be restored at scale without transforming public finance. Drawing on evidence from the Voices for Just Rural Transitions (Voices4JRT) project, this session brings frontline farmer perspectives into direct dialogue with high-level leaders in climate, finance, and policy.