Saudi Arabia will host the COP16 UN conference on land degradation and desertification next week.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called the meeting for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) a "moonshot moment" to protect and restore land and respond to drought.
"We are a desert country. We are exposed to the harshest mode of land degradation which is desertification," deputy environment minister Osama Faqeeha told AFP.
"Our land is arid. Our rainfall is very little. And this is the reality. And we have been dealing with this for centuries."
Land degradation disrupts ecosystems and makes land less productive for agriculture, leading to food shortages and spurring migration.
Land is considered degraded when its productivity has been harmed by human activities like pollution or deforestation. Desertification is an extreme form of degradation.
The last gathering of parties to the convention, in Ivory Coast in 2022, produced a commitment to "accelerating the restoration of one billion hectares of degraded land by 2030".
But the UNCCD, which brings together 196 countries and the European Union, now says 1.5 billion hectares (3.7 billion acres) must be restored by decade's end to combat crises including escalating droughts.
Saudi Arabia is aiming to restore 40 million hectares of degraded land, Faqeeha told AFP, without specifying a timeline. He said Riyadh anticipated restoring "several million hectares of land" by 2030.
So far 240,000 hectares have been recovered using measures including banning illegal logging and expanding the number of national parks from 19 in 2016 to more than 500, Faqeeha said.
Other ways to restore land include planting trees, crop rotation, managing grazing and restoring wetlands.
UNCCD executive secretary Ibrahim Thiaw told AFP he hoped COP16 would result in an agreement to accelerate land restoration and develop a "proactive" approach to droughts.
"We have already lost 40 percent of our land and our soils," Thiaw said.
"Global security is really at stake, and you see it all over the world. Not only in Africa, not only in the Middle East."
Faqeeha said he hoped the talks would bring more global awareness to the threat posed by degradation and desertification.
"If we continue to allow land to degrade, we will have huge losses," he said.
"Land degradation now is a major phenomenon that is really happening under the radar."
Saudi Arabia is hoping for strong, "constructive" civil society participation in COP16, Faqeeha said.
"We are welcoming all constructive engagement," he told AFP, while Thiaw said all groups would be welcome to contribute and express themselves.
"According to UN rules, of course there are rules of engagement, and everybody is guaranteed freedom of speech," Thiaw said.
