COP10 considered the inclusion of activities by non-governmental organisations within the official programme of work of the COP. Civil society organisations were invited for an open dialogue session.
Patrice Burger, Executive Director,
CARI (France), represented civil society organisations as moderator of the session. At the session members of civil society focused on discussing five main issues they felt needed to be addressed further by the COP. Rachel Harris of
WEDO (United States) spoke about Gender mainstreaming to ensure Sustainable Land Management and to effectively combat desertification. Seyram Aqbemenya of
ICLEI (South Africa) discussed enhancing adaptation for sustainable land management in this rapidly changing world. Subrata Bhattacharya of
GraminVIkas Trust (India) talked about partnership - possibility, challenges, opportunity. Noel Oettle of
Environment monitoring group (South Africa) presented a holistic approach to funding sustainable land management: challenges and opportunities. And Khadija Razavi of
CENESTA (Iran) discussed land grabbing: how the process of grabbing millions of hectares of fertile land from peasants, pastoralists and indigenous people is proceeding in the rest of the world.
At the
Rio Conventions Pavilion, the day's theme was poverty reduction and the Rio Conventions. The
Global Mechanism hosted a World Café conversation on integrating sustainable land management into climate change financing. The
UN Environment Programme sponsored an event on tools for modeling, measuring and monitoring carbon benefits in
GEF projects. Next, the
UN Development Programme hosted a programmatic approach to building capacities for sustainable land management in least developed countries and small island developing states. Finally, the UN's
Convention on Biological Diversity hosted an evening event, Health Planet, Health People: mainstreaming biodiversity for development, poverty eradication, health and gender equity.