This work encompasses CIAT’s contribution to WLE Management and Science Leadership and includes a leadership contribution to the new Flagship Restoring Degraded Agricultural Ecosystems (RDE), and the Ecosystem Services and Resilience core theme. In 2014 activities included ensuring awareness and increasing the profile of WLE and CGIAR in Global initiatives, including active participation in the Global Soil Forum and its group on soils and land in the SDG’s and the post 2015 agenda, and partnership in the emerging 20by20 land restoration initiative in Latin America that will be launched at the Global Landscape Forum aside COP 19 of the UNFCCC in Lima in December. In 2014 the new RDE flagship was developed, included in the extension phase proposal, and introduced to the WLE SC and to center representatives at the WLE Science Meeting in October; a framework for rollout of development economics approaches associated with Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) in WLE regions was delivered, and an ELD hub for Africa was initiated. In 2015 this activity includes i) continuing efforts within global initiatives with focus on Global Year of Soils, Global Soil Week, soils and land in the SDG’s, the 20by20 initiative, and the German ‘One world without hunger’ initiative; ii) supporting projects and initiatives within the new focal regions on research related to land degradation, ecosystem services, and gender; iii) monitoring and evaluation processes, specifically review and feedback on activity plans and reports from centers participating in RDE to continue to improve alignment of center workplans with WLE goals; iv) development of WLE initiatives under the ESR core theme; v) supporting WLE through participation in WLE SC, MC and Science meetings; and vi) seeking bilateral fund raising opportunities for WLE. This activity overall constitutes 25% FTE of the WLE management team member.