What if restoring land was the world's smartest agricultural investment?
Resilient Agriculture Investment for Net Zero Land Degradation (RAIZ) brings this vision to life by connecting ambition with investment, turning restoration into a pathway for growth, stability and long term returns.
Why land restoration can't wait
Across the world, land that once sustained communities is losing its strength. Soil is degrading, productivity is falling and ecosystems are under growing pressure.
But within this challenge lies a powerful opportunity, to restore what has been lost while building something more resilient.
About the RAIZ Project
Resilient Agriculture Investment for Net Zero land degradation
The Resilient Agriculture Investment for Net Zero land degradation (RAIZ) accelerator is a global mutirao, launched at COP30, to unlock and strategically allocate crucial funding to help restore degraded cropland and pastureland in order to improve food security, support livelihoods, safeguard biodiversity, combat desertification, and stabilise the climate.
RAIZ is aligned with the UNFCCC, UNCCD, CBD, and the Sustainable Development Goals, and directly supports the COP30 Presidency's Action Agenda on transforming agriculture and food systems, advancing the eighth key objective on rehabilitating degraded land, scaling restoration, and promoting sustainable agriculture through a clear acceleration plan.
The RAIZ Mapping Tool, developed by the G20 Global Land Initiative Coordination Office of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) with technical support from FAO, the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU), and the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, aims to provide essential data to investors, policymakers, NGOs, project developers, and agri-food value chain stakeholders.
Ahead of COP30 in Belem, Brazil, the tool maps degraded cropland and uses grassland and shrubland as proxies to locate degraded pasture, displaying a global heatmap of degraded agricultural areas. Following COP30, development will continue with countries and national institutions to co-create a Map of Degraded Agricultural Land, combining local data on environment, climate, livelihoods, and country commitments to identify priority areas for restoration and investment.
From Opportunity to Action
Restoring land takes more than intent. It takes four connected pillars working together.
Restoring Land. Protecting Futures.
Land that was once exhausted begins to breathe again, restoring productivity, strengthening livelihoods and bringing life back to ecosystems under strain.
Aligned for Global Impact
What the world has committed to, RAIZ helps deliver, advancing global goals and driving progress toward restoring 250 million hectares by 2030.
Guided by Insight
The RAIZ Mapping Tool pinpoints where restoration matters most, combining global and local data to guide investors, governments and practitioners toward high impact action.
Driving Systemic Impact
Restoration goes beyond projects. It means reshaping food systems to sustain long term productivity while maximizing economic and environmental returns.
Country Impact Assessments
Explore the vulnerability and adaptive capacity dashboards for the two countries in this study.
Mauritania
Mongolia
With the technical support of
A global platform uniting economies, businesses and civil society to transform food and land use systems — mobilising evidence and finance behind restoration at scale.
Explore moreThe UN agency leading international efforts to defeat hunger and improve food security — bringing agronomic expertise and country data to the RAIZ assessment.
Explore moreDelivers research based solutions that harness agricultural biodiversity to sustainably transform food systems and build the vulnerability and adaptive capacity models.
Explore moreA global research partnership for a food secure future, advancing climate resilient agriculture and the science underpinning restoration priorities.
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