‘Our Land. Our Future’ – SPARC at UNCCD COP16

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) COP16, took place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from December 2 to 13.

This year’s conference was on the theme of ‘Our Land. Our Future’. SPARC convened a series of events including a hybrid event on ‘Community-led restoration: Participatory rangeland management and the case for scaling globally’ on December 3. Participatory rangeland management (PRM) is a community-led process for improving the management and governance of rangelands, supported by facilitators and technical advisors. 

SPARC researchers, Fiona Flintan Senior Scientist Rangelands and Pastoralism at ILRI, and Baba Ba, Post-Doctoral Scientist – Rangelands & Pastoralism at ILRI, led the event with Naitapuaki Kileli – a farmer representative from ALOLLE.

The session, which was attended by 180 people, aimed to share experiences on how farmers and scientists have worked together to manage rangelands in an inclusive way, with a focus on East and West Africa.

The event aimed to highlight how:

• Communities can work together to improve governance and more inclusively manage pastures and other rangeland resources. 

• For PRM to be successful, the community owned system must be endorsed by all relevant stakeholders.

• The three stages of the PRM system include investigating (establishing the status quo), negotiating (having everyone agree to the proposed changes), and implementation.

At a second event on 'Landscape restoration as a pathway to peace' on December 4, SPARC joined its partners the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and Alliance Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), to showcase its new research on how local Natural Resource Management (NRM) initiatives - including 'conventions locales' (local agreements between NRM users) in Senegal - can contribute to conflict resolution. 

The event linked the UNCBD COP16 theme ‘Peace with Nature’, to UNCCD COP16, and highlighted sustainable landscapes as tools for reducing conflict and building resilience. Researchers discussed how local-level NRM, which prioritise sustainable and inclusive governance structures, and the capacity of pastoralists to address land and resource management technically, can support peacebuilding in drylands.

The event is a continuation of our ongoing work bringing new evidence on land, biodiversity and climate to policymakers and practitioners. This includes a series of key SPARC-led events at last month’s UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD) COP16 and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP29, as well as our upcoming engagement during the UN International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP) 2026.

Watch the event here. Find out more about our work on how better natural resource management in pastoralist regions can strengthen peacebuilding here, and how we are working with governments and decision makers here.