Having returned from COP17 in Mongolia, a key realization that stuck with me is how hard it is – despite all declarations to the contrary - to break the current practice of treating land degradation as yet another environmental problem when it has long become one of the largest financial and development risks of our time.

The signs are visible everywhere. Across Mongolia's vast steppe, herder communities live with the realities of changing rainfall patterns, degraded rangelands and increasing pressure on livelihoods. Around 80 percent of the country's land is already degraded, a reminder of how quickly natural systems can be eroded when the pressures on them exceed their capacity to recover. At the global level, land degradation now affects up to 40 percent of the world's land. It undermines food security, weakens water supplies, fuels displacement and deepens vulnerability to climate shocks.

The most critical test (and opportunity) coming from COP17 is how to move from commitment to action and pave a trajectory that puts the financing behind land restoration and the protection of nature. 

A concept we could use is that of “underwriting”. In finance, underwriting is the process of assessing risk and deciding whether it is worth taking. An underwriter accepts a potential future liability in exchange for a premium today. 

That idea offers a useful lens through which to view land degradation. Because collectively, we are underwriting it. Every time degraded land is treated as someone else's problem, every time unsustainable practices remain more profitable than sustainable ones, every time investment flows towards activities that exhaust soils, forests and water systems, we are effectively signing a contract with the future. We accept immediate returns while passing the costs forward.

The problem is that the people who will inherit those costs never agreed to the deal. Future generations will receive less fertile soils, reduced freshwater supplies, increased climate vulnerability and ecosystems less capable of sustaining livelihoods and economic growth. They will inherit countries depleted of natural capital while carrying liabilities accumulated by the choices of today and the past. We often speak about borrowing money. Far less often do we speak about borrowing nature and applying the financial rules of maintaining and growing nature as an ‘asset class’. This lapse in judgement is precisely what degradation represents.

Land should be viewed as infrastructure that needs to regenerate. Healthy soils, grasslands, forests and watersheds underpin food production, regulate water, moderate temperatures, reduce disaster risk and sustain livelihoods. They are as fundamental to economic prosperity as roads, ports, power grids or data centers. 

Yet our financial systems continue to value them poorly.

The numbers reveal the contradiction. According to UNEP's latest State of Finance for Nature report, for every dollar invested globally in protecting and restoring nature, thirty dollars are directed toward activities that drive environmental degradation. While approximately US$220 billion annually flows into nature-based solutions, US$7.3 trillion is invested in nature-negative activities.

The hard truth is that we are not simply underinvesting in restoration. We are actively underwriting degradation.

This is why we have now an opportunity to rewrite the terms of the future. And this is what we, as UNDP, are putting forward with our partners.

Rewriting the terms starts with changing where money flows. 

In order to bring investments into climate action, nature protection and sustainable development together under a coherent and mutually reinforcing framework, governments need to be able to track whether public spending advances land restoration or contributes to its decline. This includes identifying and redesigning public subsidies that make degradation profitable. 

More than US$1 trillion in government subsidies currently work against our ecosystems each year. Through BIOFIN, UNDP is helping over 130 countries examine these incentives and has supported the mobilization of US$2.7 billion for nature.

But redirecting harmful finance is only half the task. In addition to disincentivizing the financing of environmental degradation, countries also need to start generating dedicated returns that monetize the value of their landscapes - from payments for ecosystem services to land, livestock and resource taxes - which can then be reinvested into nature-based solutions and  community-led restoration. And they need pipelines that direct these innovative revenue streams into investable projects, thereby turning national ambitions into action on the ground. 

Finally, public capital should be used strategically to bring in private investors. Blended finance, concessional lending and guarantees can reduce the initial investment risks faced by regenerative agriculture, sustainable forestry and other nature-positive enterprises. With private finance currently providing only 10 percent of required investments in nature-based solutions, restoration must move beyond isolated public projects or philanthropy. It must become a credible, investable part of how economies manage risk and create long-term value.

But financing mechanisms without an inclusive lens will always be an inadequate solution. Indigenous Peoples and local communities - including pastoralists, women, and youth - must be at the center of these efforts. They are the real custodians of much of our land, formal owners or not, and often its most sustainable users. They are also the ones who have carried the risk we never priced or asked them to hold. Their voice and knowledge are crucial in writing the future of land.

This is ultimately what is at stake in Mongolia and beyond. COP17 took place under the banner of "Restoring Land. Restoring Hope." But hope needs a financing strategy to turn vision into reality. It must be matched by choices about what we value, what we invest in and whose future we are prepared to protect.

For too long, we have behaved as though land degradation was a slow-moving environmental concern. It is not. It is a transfer of risk across generations who never signed the contract.

The world has the knowledge, the resources and the means to change course. The question is whether we continue underwriting degradation, or whether we begin rewriting the terms for a better future.