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The legacy of the ninth session of
the Conference of the Parties (COP9) held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was the
completion of the unfinished business deriving from COP8 that took place in
Madrid, Spain, in 2007, and where Parties had agreed on a ten-year strategic
plan and framework to implement the Convention for the period 2008 to 2018 (The
Strategy).
COP8 left crucial business pending, which became
the subject of COP9, and culminated in 36
decisions and one resolution. Taken together, these decisions had three key
outcomes. They aligned the work of the Convention’s institutions with the
Strategy, put in place measures to support the efficient and effective
implementation of the Strategy by all actors, including their related
monitoring, and agreed on the resources to be provided to the Convention
institutions for carrying out the work planned for 2010 and 2011. (The report
from and decisions
taken at COP9 are available here).
Institutional Reforms. Five significant institutional reforms emerged
from COP9. First, the Committee for the Review of Implementation of the
Convention (CRIC) was made a standing
body of the Convention with a mandate and terms of reference, primary, to
guide the COP’s review, monitoring, assessment and evaluation of progress in
the implementation of the Convention via the Strategy.
Second, the COP recognized the importance of mechanisms
to facilitate regional coordination and outlined concrete steps to support
such mechanisms. Third, in the light of the JIU
report, it set in motion a process to evaluate
institutional aspects of the Global Mechanism (GM), the entity responsible
for promoting activities that would lead to the mobilization and channelling of
financial resources, and to submit the evaluation’s findings for consideration
by COP10.
Fourth, COP9 decided to enhance the global
standing of the Committee on Science and Technology (CST). To this end, it
authorized a continuation in the reshaping
of the operation of the CST in line with The Strategy by organizing
scientific conferences on CST priority themes, a review
of its roster of independent experts, addressing the role
and place of the science and technology correspondents, and a consideration
at COP10 of the CST’s
rules for electing its officers. And fifth, it defined the eligibility
criteria to sponsor the participation of civil society organizations in
official events and made provision for synergy
with other Conventions, international organizations, institutions and agencies.
Setting the Beacons for
Effectiveness. COP9’s other legacy was reaching agreement on the markers that will
be used to assess and monitor the outcomes of the intended day-to-day activities
and impact over time, putting the UNCCD on the path to both a quantitative and
qualitative measurability of its outputs, outcomes and impact.
To this end, COP9 decided that all existing and
new action
programmes must be aligned with The Strategy. It also agreed on the short-term
plans for 2010-2013 and immediate programmes or activities for 2010-2011 for
the Convention institutions, including the planned
work and next
meeting of the CST and work
programme and next
meeting of the CRIC.
COP9 also defined new terms for reporting
progress. The performance review and assessment of implementation system or PRAIS
will use a unified set of the provisional performance
indicators for measuring progress made by affected countries, as well as
their partners, to implement The Strategy. In order to move towards
standardizing the information
and communication contained in the reports submitted about this progress,
COP9 gave guidance on the elaboration of the reporting
guidelines. The first such new type of reporting would take place at the end
of 2010, followed by COP10’s consideration of the outcome
report at its meeting in 2011.
In this context and
to support
the implementation of the Strategy particularly at the national levels, COP9
urged
developed country Parties and the Global Environment Facility to, among other
things, provide
adequate, timely and predictable resources for the land
degradation focal area in the fifth replenishment of the Global
Environment Facility.
Later on, the performance review will be
complemented by an assessment of impact on the livelihoods of affected
populations and conditions of the drylands ecosystems. Thus, the COP also agreed
on two
mandatory and nine optional indicators, to be used for reporting
starting in 2012. In addition, a mid-term
review of The Strategy for 2013 was agreed to.
On the policy front, the Conference agreed that thematic
policy frameworks for advocacy are needed and should be developed, gave
consent on how to popularize
the Convention’s work, including through the Decade
campaign, and called for a follow-up
of issues relevant to the Convention that came out of the 2008 and 2009 sessions
of the Commission on Sustainable Development and of the 2002 World Summit on
Sustainable Development.
And embracing the spirit of a learning community,
COP9 agreed to deliberate on the outcomes
of its 1st Scientific Conference, and to keep a record of the
reports from the interactions
among ministers and among parliamentarians,
as well as the declaration
by the civil society organizations. With regard to the Land
Degradation Assessment in Drylands, COP9 encouraged the CST to develop
collaborative regional trainings on land degradation to improve the capacity to
monitor and assess the Strategy’s implementation.
Finance, the Policy
Bottom Line. COP9
decided that to follow-through with the activities for 2010-2011, parties would contribute
approximately 16.4 million Euros to the core budget of the Convention for
2010-2011. The Parties also took note of the additional resource needs to be
covered through voluntary contributions, which the secretariat and the Global
Mechanism estimated to amount to about 25 million Euros.
As
determined in the work programmes adopted by COP9, these changes would take
effect on 1 January 2010.
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Luc
Gnacadja, Executive
Secretary of the UNCCD |
CSOs and UNCCD Secretariat
members planted a tree at the Parque de las Mujeres Argentinas |
The Scientist
conference in plenary |
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High Level
Delegates: (left to right) Lincoln Ralechate Mokose, Minister
of Forestry and Land Reclamation, Lesotho, Luc
Gnacadja, Executive Secretary of the UNCCD, Sherry Ayittey, Ministry of Forestry and Environment,
Ghana, Sergio La Rocca, Under-Secretary of
Planning and Environmental Policy of Argentina, Octavio Pérez
Pardo, Director of Soil Conservation, Argentina, Clemente
Dlamini, Ministry of Environment, Swaziland, and Ramadham
Saif Kajembe, Ministry
of Forestry and Environment, Kenya |
Homero
Bibiloni, Argentina's
Secretary of Environment and Sustainable Development and Chairman of COP
9 |
Photos courtesy of IISD
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