•  A four-day Asia Pacific Regional Workshop of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), jointly hosted by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) and UNCCD Secretariat, to build the capacity of the Asia-Pacific Region to monitor and report on land degradation, was recently held in New Delhi.

About UNCCD:

• In 1977 the United Nations Conference on Desertification (UNCOD) adopted a Plan of Action to Combat Desertification (PACD).
• United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), which was held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 supported a new, integrated approach to the problem, emphasizing action to promote sustainable development at the community level.
• The Rio Conference called on the United Nations General Assembly to establish an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INCD) to prepare, by June 1994, a Convention to Combat Desertification, particularly in Africa.
• At UNCCD COP13 that took place in September 2017 in Ordos, China, the countries have agreed on a new global roadmap to address land degradation.
• The new UNCCD 2018-2030 Strategic Framework is the most comprehensive global commitment to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) in order to restore the productivity of vast swathes of degraded land, improve the livelihoods of more than 1.3 billion people, and to reduce the impacts of drought on vulnerable populations.
• A future that avoids, minimizes, and reverses desertification/land degradation and mitigates the effects of drought in affected areas at all levels to achieve a land degradation-neutral world consistent with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
• The Convention’s 196 parties work together to improve the living conditions for people in drylands, to maintain and restore land and soil productivity, and to mitigate the effects of drought.
• The UNCCD is particularly committed to a bottom-up approach, encouraging the participation of local people in combating desertification and land degradation.
• The UNCCD secretariat facilitates cooperation between developed and developing countries, particularly around knowledge and technology transfer for sustainable land management.
• As the dynamics of land, climate and biodiversity are intimately connected, the UNCCD collaborates closely with the other two Rio Conventions; the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to meet these complex challenges with an integrated approach and the best possible use of natural resources.