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Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Bhupender Yadav addressed the Ministerial Dialogue on 'Restoration of Rangelands and the Well-being of Pastoralist Communities' at the 17th Conference of Parties (CoP17) of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
India argued that restoration must be rooted in science, secure tenure and community stewardship, with pastoralists treated as custodians rather than beneficiaries.
The Minister cited India's roughly 25,000 community-protected sacred groves covering about 0.6 million hectares, including Rajasthan's Orans, which secure pastoral land rights and conserve habitat of the Great Indian Bustard.
He pointed to satellite-based Desertification and Land Degradation Atlases as the scientific basis for mapping grasslands, and to grazing rights and community forest resource rights as the tenure basis for community management.
India sought dedicated, accessible financing for rangeland restoration as developing countries move towards Land Degradation Neutrality, and offered to share its solutions through South-South cooperation.
The only legally binding international agreement linking environment and development to sustainable land management; it addresses desertification, land degradation and drought, and drives the global pursuit of Land Degradation Neutrality
India's nodal ministry for UNCCD and for the country's Land Degradation Neutrality commitments; represented India at the Ministerial Dialogue
Prepares the Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India using satellite data — the mapping base the Minister cited for planning grassland restoration
Land Degradation Neutrality is the state in which the amount and quality of land resources needed to support ecosystem functions and food security remain stable or increase within specified spatial and temporal scales. In practice it is a balance-sheet idea: new degradation must be offset by an equal or greater area restored, so the net position does not worsen. LDN is embedded in the Sustainable Development Goals as Target 15.3, and it is the organising objective of the UNCCD's current work. The Delhi Declaration adopted at CoP14 in New Delhi in September 2019 pushed countries to make LDN a national target for action, and India used that platform to raise its own restoration pledge from 21 million hectares to 26 million hectares by 2030. India's argument at CoP17 follows directly from this framing: if degradation is to be offset rather than merely counted, restoration has to happen on the ground through the people who use the land — which for rangelands means pastoralists.
Simple Analogy: It works like a no-net-loss rule in accounting. You are not forbidden from spending land, but every hectare degraded must be matched by a hectare brought back, so the closing balance never falls below the opening one.
UNFCCC (climate) and CBD (biodiversity) were opened for signature at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio; UNCCD followed, adopted on 17 June 1994 and in force from 26 December 1996. The three are treated together as the Rio Conventions, and rangeland restoration sits at their intersection — soil carbon for UNFCCC, grassland habitat for CBD, land degradation for UNCCD.
India hosted the 14th CoP at New Delhi from 2 to 13 September 2019 and held the CoP presidency thereafter. Its political outcome, the Delhi Declaration titled 'Investing in Land and Unlocking Opportunities', pushed LDN as a national target and recorded India's raised pledge of 26 million hectares of restored land by 2030.
Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List and listed in Schedule I of the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, the bird survives largely in Rajasthan, with the Desert National Park in Jaisalmer and Barmer districts as its stronghold. Its decline is the clearest illustration of why grassland loss matters — it is a grassland bird, not a forest one, and the Orans the Minister cited are among its remaining habitat.
The cheetah reintroduction began in September 2022 with animals from Namibia released at Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh, followed by a batch from South Africa in February 2023, with Gandhi Sagar Wildlife Sanctuary prepared as an additional site. The Minister's reference to proposed expansion into grasslands such as Banni in Gujarat's Kachchh links the cheetah programme to open-ecosystem restoration rather than to forest conservation.
The recognition of community forest resource rights under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 is the legal route by which grazing communities gain a formal say over the commons they use — the 'secure tenure' leg of India's argument at CoP17.
India's closing offer — to share experience and solutions with other developing countries — is the standard template of its environmental diplomacy, seen earlier in the International Solar Alliance and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure. It positions India as a provider of practice rather than only a claimant on climate finance.
The Minister's own list is the geography to learn: Himalayan pastures in the northern high altitudes; Central Indian savannas across the Deccan and central plateau; the arid Thar Desert in western Rajasthan; the Kachchh region of Gujarat, which contains the Banni grasslands flagged for possible cheetah expansion; and the Southern sholas, the montane grassland-and-stunted-forest mosaic of the Western Ghats. Orans, the sacred groves cited as India's community-conservation model, are concentrated in Rajasthan's desert districts, the same landscape that holds the Desert National Park in Jaisalmer and Barmer where the Great Indian Bustard survives. CoP17 itself was held in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia — a fitting venue, since Mongolian steppe rangelands and pastoral herding face the same degradation pressures the dialogue addressed.
GS Paper 3 > Environment > Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation
General Awareness > Environment and Current Affairs
General Awareness > Current Affairs
"Biorock technology" is talked about in which one of the following situations?
Answer: Restoration of damaged coral reefs
UNCCD, LDN and India's restoration pledge recur in Prelims and in GS3 Mains; grassland ecology and the Great Indian Bustard have both been asked directly.
Grasslands, savannas, shrublands and pastures grazed by livestock and wildlife; in India they span Himalayan pastures, Central Indian savannas, the Thar and Kachchh, and the Southern sholas.
A state where the amount and quality of land resources needed for ecosystem function and food security remains stable or increases; SDG Target 15.3 and the UNCCD's central objective.
Sacred groves of Rajasthan protected by local communities for cultural and ecological reasons; they secure pastoral land rights and hold critical habitat, including for the Great Indian Bustard.
The montane grassland-and-stunted-evergreen-forest mosaic of the higher Western Ghats; one of the rangeland landscapes India cited.
Rights recognised under the Forest Rights Act, 2006 that give a village community legal authority to protect and manage the forest commons it traditionally uses.
A livelihood system based on raising livestock on natural pasture, typically involving seasonal movement; the practice whose practitioners India argued should be treated as custodians of rangelands.