Strengthening Civil Society Role in Achieving Land Degradation Neutrality This project is designed to increase the role of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in delivering Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN), and in promoting adherence to LDN principles, including environmental and social safeguards, in public and private investments. The project has a global scope and will strengthen the capacity and the level of engagement of CSOs in the regions. The project objective is: â€œIncreased capacities and recognition of the CSOs to contribute to the adherence of LDN principles in policies, programs and investmentsâ€. This will be delivered through capacities and support to CSOs to ensure that LDN is better aligned with established principles and practices and to lead investments in LDN. The project will consist of 2 components: 1) Influencing LDN and 2) Leveraging LDN. Component 1 focuses on increasing the recognition of CSOs at the political level, as well as increasing opportunities to be involved in designing, implementing, and evaluating LDN transformative projects. This is further extended to increasing the visibility of CSOs efforts towards achieving LDN. This will be done through a variety of mechanisms, namely knowledge development and exchange, mentoring, advocacy towards policy makers, awareness raising events and mobilisation of CSO community. Component 2 seeks to answer this demand, by building CSOs capacities and providing technical support to CSOs to leverage funds and convening fund raising meetings with donors and private investors. It is centred around a single outcome: CSOsâ€™ capacities to leverage funds for LDN are increased. This will be achieved through knowledge development and exchange, and increased engagement with donors Note: Disbursement data provided is cumulative and covers disbursement made by the project Agency. As a global scale project, the socioeconomic benefits delivered by the project at national and local level will be indirect and context dependent. Overall, the project targets building the capacity of CSOs in both advocacy and fund-raising; these will directly feed into their mandate to bring forth civil societies to government, monitoring policies and encouraging political participation at the community level.  Under Component 1, CSOs will be able to gain more knowledge about the UNCCD and LND, which in turn; this will improve their ability to understand how and when they can influence policy, starting at a national level, but for some, at an international level. This is of particular importance for countries where land degradation and LDN may not be prioritized; it will increase their ability to more effectively advocate to their governments, creating the necessary environment to encourage and strengthen sustainable land management and restoration opportunities. In terms of communities, this translates into the recognized socio-economic benefits of such actions (e.g., improved food production, natural resource management, climate resilience).   Through component 2 (and some capacity building elements of Component 1 – e.g., communication), CSOs should be better equipped to navigate the funding landscape, which in essence, will provide more opportunities for community-based projects to slow land degradation or increase land restoration efforts. This in turn will provide numerous socioeconomic benefits to the local populations benefitting from the initiatives, including but not limited to, improved food production, improved and sustainable water and other natural resource management, improved health, increased job opportunities, and importantly climate change resilience.   It is also important to recognize that this project will also improve the socio-economic opportunities for many of the CSO-based individuals taking part in the project, namely in terms of professional prospects. It provides a way to build capacity (i.e., increase skill sets), as well as expose them to novel situations and people. This, particularly in the global south, are non-negligible impacts, as it helps foster the confidence, capacity and networking that is necessary to increase the influence of such stakeholders on the global policy level, which in turn, should help further the (sustainable) socio-economic development agenda.