Q&A with Tony Simons alongside the UNCCD “land” COP

While the aforementioned splashy COPs are spearheaded by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, whose mission speaks for itself, the COP that just convened in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire was the conference of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which bears a unique mandate whose foothold has long been in a singular, often overlooked part of the world.
In recent years, the acronym ‘COP’ – Conference of the Parties – has gained ground in the public lexicon. It is the semi-annual governing “party” of inter-governmental conventions attended by nation states and their invited observers. The COP tied to the theme of climate change has historically been the biggest “party,” the most recent one in Glasgow last November attracting big-name actors such as David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg and Barack Obama and garnering many international news headlines.

But wait: another COP just happened on 9 to 20 May, and it went largely unnoticed.

While the aforementioned splashy COPs are spearheaded by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, whose mission speaks for itself, the COP that just convened in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire was the conference of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which bears a unique mandate whose foothold has long been in a singular, often overlooked part of the world.

However, according to Tony Simons, director general of World Agroforestry (ICRAF) and executive director of its partnership with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR-ICRAF), this is changing. These UNCCD conferences, of which this was the fifteenth (UNCCD COP15), are going through a makeover and becoming more important than ever before. Here, he explains.
What is different about this UNCCD COP from others in the past?
UNCCD COPs have struggled because they seemed to be largely contextualized inside the Sahel – very focused on halting the march of the desert through actions that were particularly politically grounded in the Sahelian countries. And yet, it’s worth noting that four of the 26 COPs for climate have been held in Africa whereas none of the past 14 COPs for desertification have been held in Africa.

I think what UNCCD member states and the secretariat realized is that they have to reposition themselves beyond the original narrow focus. They have to be seen in a wider context. This started a few years ago with the global mechanism and with the land degradation neutrality goal, which are great. But here, I think, for the first time, this COP is branching out and saying, “We are the land COP.”

What we’re hoping comes out of this COP is much greater attention on land as the organizing framework, and the different systems – food, water, social, financial, energy – operating inside that bigger land-use, land-management framework.

Aside from “land,” what other new language is relevant for the mandate of the UNCCD?
“Convergence.” See, let’s take food systems. Since 2015, there have been more than 32 major publications that have put forth a visualization of the food system. Of the 32, only a few mention land as an element – which makes them overly food-production oriented. Food systems have got to be not only about feeding humans but also about feeding ecosystems, feeding biodiversity, feeding the landscape. For example, one tonne of artificial nitrogen fertilizer takes eight megawatts of energy to produce, and then we often put it on land with too little life in it to use it and keep the soil’s natural carbon-nitrogen balance. It’s a waste: typically, don’t put fertilizer on land with less than 0.75 percent soil organic carbon. So as we see, we need to converge actors and ideas. We need to make sure land approaches doesn’t become further fragmented.
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