Land degradation affects billions of people worldwide, and the number is expected to increase as climate change intensifies and large parts of the world are becoming dry. Soils are losing their fertility, vegetation is disappearing and the once-productive landscapes are becoming barren.
The scale of this transformation is striking. According to the United Nations, more than three-quarters of the world’s land has experienced a drier climate over the past three decades. Drylands are expanding, while rising temperatures and increasingly unpredictable rainfall are placing ecosystems and communities under mounting pressure. Water becomes harder to retain and communities face increasing threats to their livelihoods.
The consequences are far-reaching. When the land is degraded by prolonged drought, unsustainable agriculture, deforestation and poor land management, desertification can follow. Yet, degradation does not have to be the end of the story. Across the world, communities, governments and environmental organizations are working to turn damaged landscapes green again. By restoring vegetation, rebuilding healthy soils and managing land and water more sustainably, they are showing that even severely degraded ecosystems can begin to recover – and that it may still be possible to turn back the clock.
What Is Regreening Degraded Landscapes? Hope for a Drying Planet
Regreening degraded landscapes refers broadly to efforts to restore vegetation and ecological functions in degraded landscapes. The regreening degraded landscapes can involve planting trees and native vegetation, restoring agricultural terraces, improving soil management, protecting natural regeneration and helping communities adopt more sustainable farming practices. These projects are taking place across almost every continent, including some of the world’s most challenging dry environments – from the Sahara and Sahel to the Atacama, Gobi and Mojave regions.
The objective is not simply to make a landscape look greener. Successful restoration aims to rebuild the ecological systems that allow land to support plants, animals and people. Healthy vegetation can reduce soil erosion, improve soil structure, increase water infiltration and create habitats for wildlife. In agricultural areas, better land management can also improve food production and make communities more resilient to drought.
Local Communities Are Central to Success of Regreening Degraded Landscapes
One of the most important lessons from restoration projects is that ecological solutions cannot be separated from the people who depend on the land. Communities living in drylands often possess generations of knowledge about local rainfall patterns, soils, plants and farming practices. Their involvement can determine whether a restoration project survives long after outside funding and technical support have ended.
As Shaun Fitzgerald, director of the Centre for Climate Repair at the University of Cambridge, has argued, understanding what local communities need and value is essential. People living in degraded landscapes have valuable knowledge about how to survive and work within difficult environmental conditions.
This means regreening degraded landscapes cannot simply be a matter of arriving somewhere, planting thousands of trees and leaving. Restoration works best when communities help decide what should be planted, where it should be planted and how the land should subsequently be managed.
The Loess Plateau: A Remarkable Example
One of the best-known examples of large-scale land restoration comes from China’s Loess Plateau. The region had suffered from severe soil erosion and land degradation. Beginning in the late 1990s, restoration programmes – including the Grain for Green initiative – encouraged farmers to convert some cropland into forests and grasslands. Between 1999 and 2020, around 5.6 million hectares of land were restored on the plateau. The results demonstrated what large-scale restoration can achieve. Increased vegetation helped reduce soil erosion, improved habitats and allowed the landscape to retain more water.
The experience of regreening degraded landscapes also showed that restoration can produce benefits beyond the environment. Healthier landscapes can improve agricultural productivity, reduce vulnerability to drought and contribute to better livelihoods. However, the Loess Plateau also offers an important warning.
When Planting Trees Creates New Problems
In the early stages of restoration, some projects relied on non-native tree species selected because they could tolerate dry conditions. These trees grew successfully – but their success came with an ecological cost. Some non-native species consumed more water than the local environment could sustainably provide. In a water-stressed landscape, increasing tree cover does not automatically mean increasing ecological health. This is a crucial lesson for restoration projects worldwide.
More trees do not necessarily equal a healthier ecosystem. A successful project must consider native biodiversity, available water, soil conditions and the natural characteristics of the landscape. Planting the wrong species in the wrong place can create new environmental pressures instead of solving existing ones.
The Albedo Question
There is another potential complication: albedo, or the amount of solar energy reflected by a surface. Bare desert soils are often relatively light in colour and can reflect significant amounts of sunlight. Vegetation tends to be darker and can absorb more solar radiation.
Consequently, replacing bright desert surfaces with vegetation can alter the amount of solar energy absorbed by the landscape and potentially create a local warming effect. This does not mean that regreening is inherently harmful. Rather, it highlights the extraordinary complexity of large-scale environmental interventions.
Climate systems involve interactions between vegetation, soil, water, clouds, atmospheric circulation and sunlight. A project designed to improve one part of the system can sometimes produce unexpected effects elsewhere.
Should We Restore or Prevent Desertification?
These challenges raise an important question: should environmental efforts focus on restoring land after degradation, or should the priority be preventing degradation in the first place? Ideally, both approaches are necessary. Restoration can help repair landscapes that have already been damaged. But preventing degradation is often cheaper, easier and less risky than trying to rebuild an ecosystem after it has collapsed.
Protecting existing forests, grasslands, wetlands and agricultural soils can therefore be just as important as planting new vegetation. The Amazon rainforest provides a powerful example. Although it is not a conventional desertification zone, deforestation and climate change can push forest ecosystems towards a drier and more vulnerable state. Once ecological thresholds are crossed, restoring the original ecosystem can become extremely difficult. Prevention, in other words, should be considered the first line of defence than regreening degraded landscapes.
A Smarter Approach to Regreening Degraded Landscapes
The future of land restoration should not be measured simply by the number of trees planted or the number of hectares declared “green”. A more meaningful approach for regreening degraded landscapes would ask:
- Are native species being restored?
- Is groundwater being protected?
- Is soil fertility improving?
- Is biodiversity returning?
- Are local communities benefiting?
- Can the ecosystem survive future droughts?
- Is the project reducing or increasing pressure on scarce water resources?
These questions shift the focus from greening landscapes to restoring functioning ecosystems. That distinction matters. A landscape covered with trees can still be ecologically fragile. Conversely, a dryland ecosystem may naturally contain grasslands, shrubs and sparse vegetation that are perfectly adapted to its climate. Restoration should therefore work with nature rather than attempting to impose an artificial image of what a healthy landscape should look like.
Conclusion: Restoration With Nature, Not Against It
The drying of the world’s land is one of the major environmental challenges of the 21st century. Desertification threatens biodiversity, water supplies, food security and the livelihoods of millions of people. Regreening offers genuine hope.
From China’s Loess Plateau to restoration initiatives across Africa, Asia and Latin America, there is growing evidence that degraded landscapes can recover when ecological knowledge, appropriate land management and community participation come together.
But regreening degraded landscapes is not a magic solution. The lessons of large-scale projects show that poorly chosen species, excessive water consumption and unintended climate effects can undermine good intentions. The most effective strategy is therefore not simply to plant more trees, but to understand each landscape and restore the ecological processes that make it resilient.
Ultimately, the best way to fight desertification may be a combination of prevention, careful restoration and local participation. A greener future is possible through regreening degraded landscapes – but only if we learn to restore land according to the needs of nature and the people who depend on it.
References
- United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Global Land Outlook and reports on drought, land degradation and desertification.
- United Nations, World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought resources and global land-degradation assessments.
- World Bank, research and resources on land degradation, restoration and the economic impacts of ecosystem decline.
- FAO, research on land degradation, sustainable land management and dryland restoration.
- Centre for Climate Repair, University of Cambridge, research and commentary on climate repair and environmental restoration.
- World Resources Institute, research on forest landscape restoration and global restoration initiatives.
- Research literature on China’s Loess Plateau restoration and the Grain for Green programme, including studies of vegetation, soil erosion and water resources.
