Experts from the United Nations University Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources (UNU Resource Nexus) contributed to four events at the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP17), held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, in August 2026 under the theme "Restoring Land. Restoring Hope." Their contributions centred on a challenge that goes to the heart of that theme: restoring landscapes degraded by mining.
Post-Mining Landscape Restoration Workshop
On 27 August, the conference's Food Systems and Soil Health Day, UNU Resource Nexus hosted the Post-Mining Landscape Restoration Workshop as an official COP17 side event. Organised together with the German-Mongolian Institute for Resources and Technology (GMIT), the training workshop brought together mining professionals, government representatives, researchers and members of non-governmental organisations to address one of Mongolia's most pressing environmental challenges.
Rather than treating restoration as a matter of land alone, the workshop used the Resource Nexus framework – which considers water, soil, waste and other environmental resources together – to explore integrated solutions across the life of a mine, from responsible operation to closure and site rehabilitation. It aimed to build capacity among Mongolian practitioners for sustainable post-mining transitions, to identify where Resource Nexus-based tools can be applied in the Mongolian context, and to strengthen trilateral cooperation between Germany, Mongolia and the UN system in the mining sector.
The workshop drew on an international team of experts working with UNU Resource Nexus: Prof. Daniel Karthe, who became Director of the institute on 1 September; Dr. Alexey Alekseenko, the institute's Head of Research; Dr. Gareth Simpson (WSP Australia); Prof. Martin Kressner (TU Bergakademie Freiberg); and Prof. Arne Cierjacks (HTW Dresden). Ms. Yubin Yang and Dr. Alexey Alekseenko moderated the session. The workshop was supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
Contributions Across the Conference
Earlier in the week, on Finance Day (24 August), Prof. Karthe joined the panel discussion "Public and Policy Finance" alongside speakers from UNDP's GEF Small Grants Programme, the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie and civil society.
On Land and People Day (26 August), the institute contributed to two further events. At the side event "Potential for Enhancing Greenhouse Gas Sequestration through the Restoration of Mining-Disturbed Land", organised by the Institute of Geography and Geoecology of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Prof. Karthe delivered opening remarks and, together with Dr. Alekseenko, presented the Resource Nexus approach to restoring mining-disturbed lands. The panel also featured international researchers, Mongolian government representatives and mining companies Oyu Tolgoi LLC and Monpolymet Group.
That afternoon, Dr. Alekseenko spoke on the Resource Nexus approach to landscape restoration at the session "Digital Innovation, Biodiversity Intelligence and Restoration Technologies", hosted by Trigteq LLC. Fellow speakers from Rio Tinto, Trigteq, NatureMetrics and Nippon Koei covered digital solutions for more sustainable mining, eDNA-based biodiversity monitoring, and biological soil crust methods for erosion control and grassland recovery.
Looking Ahead
Building on the exchanges in Ulaanbaatar, UNU Resource Nexus is preparing a more extensive international training workshop on post-mining landscape restoration, planned for Ulaanbaatar in 2027 for land restoration practitioners from Mongolia and Central Asia.
