Why is the General Assembly convening a high-level meeting?

Taking place in the context of the UN Decade for Deserts and the Fights against Desertification (2010-2020), the high-level meeting aims to raise awareness of desertification, land degradation and drought at the highest level. The outcomes of the meeting will be transmitted to the tenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification that will be held from 10 to 21 October 2011 in Changwon City, Republic of Korea. It also seeks to contribute to the preparation of the upcoming UN Conference on Sustainable Development in June 2012 (Rio+20)

In December 2010, the General Assembly adopted a resolution on the “Implementation of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification in Those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa” [A/RES/65/160] and decided to convene a high-level meeting on the theme: Addressing desertification, land degradation and drought in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication on 20 September 2011.

This CD-ROM compiles all documents and the special website created for the High Level meeting of UN General Assembly on the theme, “Addressing desertification, land degradation and drought in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication". By holding the high-level event, the member states of the General Assembly examined the implications of these trends for the future in order to determine the measures that may be needed to arrest the situation before it gets out of hand.

The degradation of the land the production is inevitable, given the need to produce food and extract other valuable resource. Should we continue to do so infinitely and everywhere? Is there a sustainable level of land degradation that could guarantee a stable future for posterity? What about reclaiming and rehabilitating the 12 million hectares of land – or the equivalent of the amount we degrade - every year as an off-set and thus, guarantee the sustainability of healthy and productive land now and in future?

With the General Assembly, the UNCCD, whose primary focus is the land degradation in the drylands, also hopes to engage the policy-makers on the degradation taking place outside the drylands. The absence of a consolidated policy framework to combat the land degradation in the non-drylands areas combined with the growing competition of such land, has implications for success in combating desertification in the drylands. So how do we do so?

The outcomes of the meeting were transmitted to the tenth session of the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification held from 10 to 21 October 2011 in Changwon City, Republic of Korea. The outcome are also be relayed to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio plus 20)

# Widespread poverty: more than one billion people live on marginal lands, many caught in a vicious cycle that intensifies dysfunctional patterns and further isolates them.
# Land degradation is both a cause and consequence of poverty, affecting 1.5 billion people: 42% of the world’s poorest people live in degraded areas, compared to 15% of others.
# Declining agricultural and land productivity across 24% of the Earth’s land mass: more than half of farm lands worldwide are now moderately to severely degraded.
# Persistent conflict: 80% of armed conflicts occurred in arid lands in 2007.
# Growing numbers of economic migrants and environmental refugees, whose arrival often exacerbates problems and tensions in host communities, and further degrades land.
United Nations Decade for Deserts and the Fight Against Desertification (UNDDD).