Drylands cover over 40% of Earth's land surface and support more than two billion people. Yet infrastructure expansion — roads, energy corridors, data centers, and transmission lines — is accelerating across these landscapes with insufficient regard for the land degradation, fragmentation, and hydrological disruption that follows] . These impacts require a shift toward integrated, landscape-level approaches to infrastructure planning that use nature-based solutions (NbS) to manage these risks.
 
Grasslands and rangelands are under increasing threat from infrastructure development, including transportation corridors, energy infrastructure (pipelines, wind and solar energy, transmission lines) and more recently, the explosion in data center construction. TNC will host an informal discussion in support of the Presidency Initiative “Nature-Based Solutions for Sustainable Infrastructure” (NbS4SII) and explore pathways to ensure infrastructure is sustainable and supports UNCCD objectives.