News & stories

There is a lot of talk about getting back to normal after the COVID-19 crisis is over. And yet normal – business as usual – is what has made our planet and our societies vulnerable to crises in the first place.

The  new installment of the UNCCD Science-Policy blog presents Chefs' Manifesto: a network of 700 chefs from 70 countries who are championing a better food future, inspiring people to make changes in their kitchens and communities and empowering them to call on governments and companies to play their part on the topics that chefs are most passionate about. The blog focuses on links between consumption and land, highlighting the importance of soil health, reduced food waste and under-utilized ingredients. It also features the work of chefs who go above and beyond to transform the health of our soil, the planet and the people, mobilizing stakeholders to coordinate global campaigns and advocacy to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger.  Read more:  UNCCD Science-Policy weblog Desertification and Drought Day 2020 Short film series for Desertification and Drought Day 2020 Land and Sustainable Development Goals

UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw speaks with Deutsche Welle on 06.04.2020 Pour certains environnementalistes et experts, le nouveau coronavirus est l'une des conséquences de la destruction de l’environnement. Dans ce magazine, Ibrahim Thiaw, le secrétaire exécutif de la Convention de l'ONU sur la lutte contre la désertification, explique que la majorité des nouvelles maladies infectieuses humaines sont transmises par des animaux dont nous détruisons l’environnement.  Nature reacts to call us to order. For some environmentalists and experts, the new coronavirus is one of the consequences of the destruction of the environment. In this magazine, Ibrahim Thiaw, the executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, explains that the majority of new human infectious diseases are transmitted by animals whose environment we destroy. Click to listen...

When populations experience economic growth, their appetite for more food and more resource intensive food grows. While this is welcomed in many parts of the world in which communities suffer malnutrition and hunger, the gap between the haves and have nots is growing. The Chefs’ Manifesto is championing a better food future, inspiring people to make changes in their kitchens and communities and empowering them to call on governments and companies to play their part.

The UNCCD secretariat is issuing a call for an alternate observer of the Science Policy Interface (SPI) representing the civil society organizations (CSOs) accredited to the convention.

With the right information about land, and the right tools to use it, countries can work together with Earth observation organizations toward building back better after the COVID-19 pandemic. But collaboration between data experts and data users is needed to make sure the information is right. Today, over 100 decision makers will have their say in a Data Quality Standards Workshop being hosted virtually by the GEO LDN Initiative.   The idea is straightforward – if we can optimize what we do where, we can bring land back into balance. In turn, this can help us bring nature, climate and the people’s needs, such as food and energy, into balance. And in the process, we can stabilize the primary driver for emerging infectious diseases like COVID-19, which is land use change.  But getting this done requires unprecedented cooperation among the many providers and many users of that information. Today, those end users will have their say on improving the quality of data used to monitor land.  The good news is the necessary framework for success is in place. In 2015, world leaders agreed to 17 Global Goals, officially known as the Sustainable Development Goals, that have the power to create a better world. Under Goal 15 (Life on Land) is SDG Target 15.3 on land degradation neutrality, where countries are striving to avoid, reduce and reverse land degradation. To date, 123 countries are actively engaged and in 2019, over 140 countries reported on this target in a harmonized way for the first time.  Enhancing the monitoring data so that countries can take effective action has been taken on by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), an intergovernmental and inter-organizational body that brings countries and the major data providers together to solve Earth information challenges.  With the GEO LDN Initiative, they have taken on one of the most difficult challenges countries face: harmonizing the myriad of data options and analytical tools into a work stream that is open to all (efficiency and flexibility), capable of meeting the needs of countries in a consistent way (comparability), and capable of empowering countries in the application of complex data sets (national ownership). Thanks to a timely pledge from the government of Germany, data providers have collaboratively contributed to a set of minimum data quality standards, and these are now being previewed by the policy makers in countries – the ultimate end users of the data.  The countries and organizations collaborating on the GEO LDN Initiative have reached a critical juncture in producing a major upgrade. Turning this aspiration into action means doing the right things in the right places at the right scale; a holistic approach on how we use and manage land in order for the world to build back better. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, in his International Mother Earth Day message, summarized it best: “We need to turn the recovery into a real opportunity to do things right for the future.”  Read more: GEO Partnership Launches LDN Initiative to Link Global and Local Data for SDG Monitoring Land Degradation Neutrality. Why it matters, how it's done Scientific Conceptual Framework for Land Degradation Neutrality