Following two weeks of high-level discussions and negotiations, delegates adopted 38 decisions to improve drought resilience, reduce land degradation, invest in land restoration efforts, and improve synergies with the climate change and biodiversity conventions.
Elephants, like humans, are smart and strong, but their real virtue is their empathy and ability for cooperation.” In his opening remarks to the fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)—the first in-person meeting since its landmark conference in Delhi in 2019—UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw used the metaphor of the host country Côte d’Ivoire’s national symbol, “a highly intelligent and social animal known for sharing loud joyful cries when reuniting with family” to highlight both the joy of being reunited, and the essence of solidarity and cooperation to move towards land degradation neutrality (LDN).

Summary report, 9–20 May 2022
“We all play a role in the common fight against climate change and land degradation, recognizing that a healthy and safe environment is vital to the future of the Earth.” With these words Côte d’Ivoire Prime Minister Patrick Achi concluded the 15th Session of the Conference of Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

Following two weeks of high-level discussions and negotiations, UNCCD COP 15 adopted 38 decisions to improve drought resilience, reduce land degradation, and invest in land restoration efforts, including agreement to:

accelerate the restoration of one billion hectares of degraded land by 2030 through improved data collection, monitoring, and reporting;
boost drought resilience by improving a new partnership model for large-scale integrated landscape investment programmes;
improve national policies and early warning, monitoring, and assessment, in particular as related to sand and dust storms and drought;
improve efforts around capacity building, sharing of knowledge and lessons, and coordination towards these efforts at the regional level;
establish an Intergovernmental Working Group on Drought for 2022-2024 to support a shift from reactive to proactive drought management;
improve women’s involvement in land management through ensuring secure land tenure and collecting gender-disaggregated data on the impacts of desertification, land degradation and drought;
develop policies to reduce the impact and occurrence of sand and dust storms through early warning, risk assessment and reducing man-made causes;
ensure greater synergies among the three Rio Conventions, including complementarities in the implementation of these treaties through nature-based solutions and target-setting at the national level; and
strengthen the participation of civil society organizations and youth in the work and meetings of the UNCCD.

Following the initial two-day High-Level Segment, the UNCCD’s two subsidiary bodies, the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC) and the Committee on Science and Technology (CST), convened in parallel to the COP. The CRIC developed eight decisions for COP consideration, including: improving the procedures for communication of information, as well as the quality and formats of reports; integration of Sustainable Development Goal 15 (SDG 15) and specifically target 15.3 into the implementation of the Convention, and the development and promotion of activities for targeted capacity building to further the implementation of the Convention.

The CST developed six decisions for COP consideration, including scientific reports on the potential contribution of integrated land use planning and integrated landscape management, and approaches for assessment and monitoring of resilience of vulnerable populations and ecosystems to drought, among other issues.

New commitments adopted during the COP include:

the Abidjan Call issued by the Heads of State and Government attending the Summit;
the Abidjan Declaration on Achieving Gender Equality for Successful Land Restoration, which emerged from the Gender Caucus; and
the Land, Life and Legacy Declaration, including the Abidjan Legacy Programme, a five-year, USD 1.5 billion comprehensive and innovative approach to fight against deforestation through forest restoration, and aims to restore 20% of the Ivorian forest cover by the end of the decade.

Other initiatives launched during the COP include:

the Business for Land Initiative, to showcase commitments made by participating companies towards land degradation neutrality, both in supply chains and corporate social responsibility activities; and
the Sahel Sourcing Challenge to enable communities growing the Great Green Wall to use technology to monitor progress, create jobs, and commercialize their produce.

COP 15 convened in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, from 9-20 May 2022. Nearly 7,000 participants attended the COP, including Heads of State and Government, ministers, delegates from the 197 parties to the UNCCD, as well as members of the private sector, civil society, women, youth leaders, and the media.

A Brief History of the UNCCD

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification is one of the three Rio Conventions—along with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)—and was called for in Agenda 21, the programme of action adopted at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, or Earth Summit).

The intergovernmental negotiating committee for the elaboration of a convention to combat desertification in those countries experiencing serious drought and/or desertification, particularly in Africa, convened five times between May 1993 and June 1994. The UNCCD, and four regional implementation annexes for Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Northern Mediterranean were adopted on 17 June 1994. The Convention entered into force on 26 December 1996, and currently has 197 parties. A fifth regional implementation annex, for Central and Eastern Europe, entered into force in 2001.
Key Turning Points

The UNCCD COP convened for the first time in Rome, Italy, in 1997, in parallel with the first meeting of the CST. Delegates selected Bonn, Germany, as the location for the UNCCD’s Secretariat and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) as the organization to administer the Global Mechanism (GM). Established under Article 21 of the UNCCD, the GM assists countries in the mobilization of financial resources to implement the Convention and address desertification, land degradation and drought (DLDD).

At COP 5 in 2001 in Geneva, Switzerland, the UNCCD established the CRIC. COP 6, held in Havana, Cuba, in 2003, designated the Global Environment Facility (GEF) as a financial mechanism of the UNCCD.

Parties adopted the first ten-year UNCCD strategic plan in 2007 at COP 8 in Madrid, Spain. Despite protracted negotiations, the session failed to adopt a decision on the budget, leading to the first-ever UNCCD extraordinary session in November 2007 in New York. At COP 10, which convened in 2011, in Changwon City, Republic of Korea, delegates agreed to restructure the UNCCD GM by transferring accountability and legal representation of the Mechanism from Rome-based IFAD to the UNCCD Secretariat in Bonn.

COP 11 took place in 2013 in Windhoek, Namibia. Discussions centered on the Convention’s role in achieving land degradation neutrality (LDN) in the context of sustainable development, as agreed at the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20). The session established a UNCCD Science-Policy Interface (SPI), as well as an ad hoc working group to provide guidance on how to refine impact indicators for monitoring the Convention’s implementation.

At COP 12 in Ankara, Turkey, soon after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015, discussions focused on how to align existing programmes to the aspiration for LDN, and other relevant Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and targets. Parties agreed to strive to achieve a single, unified objective, with a focus on how to establish and monitor national-level voluntary LDN targets.

Held in Ordos, China in 2017, COP 13 adopted a new, SDG-aligned UNCCD Strategic Framework (2008-2018), as well as a set of thematic policy frameworks to guide programmes on gender, drought, sand and dust storms (SDS) and migration. The COP also launched the LDN Fund—co-managed by the UNCCD’s GM and investment management firm Mirova—to spearhead large-scale land restoration projects. Other key outputs focused on entry points for linking the new UNCCD Strategic Framework (2018-2030) to the 2030 Agenda.

COP 14 took place in New Delhi, India in 2019. Substantive negotiations focused on proposed work programmes on new thematic areas agreed at COP 13. Due to a lack of consensus on how to implement the drought policy framework, delegates agreed, subject to the availability of resources, to establish an intergovernmental working group to explore effective policy and implementation measures. The COP also agreed to include land tenure as a new thematic area under the Convention. With the forthcoming launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030), discussions at the High-Level Segment further explored how to build momentum towards a global movement on land restoration.

The second extraordinary session of the COP (COP ES-2) convened in December 2021 under the silence procedure to adopt an interim budget for the UNCCD in 2022. This followed the postponement of COP 15, originally scheduled to take place in 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With no written comments received within the 72-hour silence procedure stipulated by UNCCD rules, the budget was formally adopted following a communication from the COP President on Thursday, 9 December 2021. The interim programme and budget allowed the Convention and its Secretariat to continue operating in 2022.
READ THE SUMMARY/analysis FOLLOWING THE LINKS ABOVE