LocationsCOP17: Key Takeaways from Asia and the Pacific
August 25, 2026
The year 2026 offers a rare opportunity: all three global environmental conventions on land, biodiversity and climate convene, making this year 2026 a Tri-COP year. The Conference of the Parties (COP17) in Ulaanbaatar is the first of the three Rio Convention conferences, making it a unique moment to set an integrated tone for the year.
While Asia-Pacific faces critical challenges from drought and desertification, it is also a hub of innovation, policy development, and investment in sustainable land management and restoration. At COP17, delegates representing 179 member states of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification engaged with local communities and business partners to find solutions for land degradation—which affects half of the world's population, fuels poverty, and drives mass migration.
UNDP Deputy Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific Beate Trankmann led the UNDP delegation through a week of high-level engagements on land restoration, drought resilience, and sustainable development. The region showcased how countries across Asia and the Pacific are translating global commitments into action. Drawing on experience from drylands, rangelands, mountain ecosystems, forests, agricultural landscapes, and Small Island Developing States, the region offered practical examples of how climate, biodiversity, and land restoration objectives can be pursued through integrated planning, investment, and implementation.
To bridge the gap between policy and practice, UNDP is calling on Asia-Pacific governments to use this moment – adopting integrated national planning frameworks across the three Rio Conventions, and to ensure COP17 outcomes actively reinforce, rather than operate in parallel to the biodiversity and climate agendas that follow.
Through country experiences from Mongolia, China, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Pacific Island countries, UNDP highlighted solutions to some of the region's most pressing challenges, including aridity, drought, rangeland degradation, water insecurity, ecosystem decline and sand and dust storms. These experiences demonstrate scalable approaches to sustainable land management, ecosystem restoration and climate resilience.
As the COP17 continues this week, the focus will be more on how to scale-up finance for land restoration and drought resilience. Stay tuned!
Learn more about UNDP events: https://www.undp.org/nature/events/unccd-cop17