Other meetings & events

The event will raise awareness on the different challenges and opportunities that exist in the Sahel region, while placing youth, women, and smallholder farmers, herders and social entrepreneurs at the center of the conversation. The event will coalesce relevant local, national, regional, and global stakeholders, including members and representatives of Sahelian countries. It will feature initiatives and innovations that have accelerated socio-economic growth and enabled shared prosperity in the Sahel. The event will place special emphasis on the Great Green Wall Initiative, assessing its progress, identifying remaining gaps, bottlenecks, and areas of action, while fostering the establishment of new partnerships and reinvigorating old ones to further support the initiative. Join here...  

Droughts cause deep and multi-faceted damages to ecosystems, (agro) economies and societies, particularly to vulnerable populations, namely in rural areas worldwide. The global climate crisis, fueled and exacerbated by man-made changes, and the weakening of ecological functions increases the severity of drought events.  Droughts are only one in the bucket of natural and man-made hazards and risks. They have to be understood and addressed from a multi-risk perspective. The ongoing COVID pandemic is a defining moment for strengthening drought resilience in society and managing ecosystems more sustainably.  The webinar examines these challenges and aims to improve our understanding of multi-risk assessment starting from the work of WASAG group on drought. The webinar will present an overarching understanding of the linkages through insights from experts on the conceptual framework, research and insights from policies. The event brings together stakeholders from international and multilateral organizations, research institutions, and policy-think tanks, with the common agenda to enhance the multi-risk approaches including drought. The webinar will provide ways forward for the multi-risk assessment framework, and especially to the endeavors of development cooperation to reduce and manage risks in developing countries. The scope for future cooperation and collaboration will be explored.  Registration link: https://fao.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9wg_4KmrRA22z60tGIRUIw

Anniversaries offer opportunities to reflect on the past and imagine the future. In 2022, the United Nations Environment Programme turns fifty and has a chance to reimagine itself. Created to catalyze environmental work within the United Nations and beyond, how has UNEP done? What are the new challenges and what should it do differently? Who can cause that change, and how can they do so? To explore the questions over the year that commemorates UNEP’s 50th anniversary, the Center for Governance and Sustainability at UMass Boston convenes a series of conversations with leaders around the world who have shaped UNEP’s history. Guests will engage with the new book by Center Director Prof. Maria Ivanova, The Untold Story of the World’s Leading Environmental Institution: UNEP at 50.  Join this dialogue space as we explore untold stories and reimagine environmental multilateralism.   For this dialogue, Dr. Maria Ivanova will be joined by Elizabeth Mrema and Ibrahim Thiaw, the Executive Secretaries of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. Both Elizabeth Mrema and Ibrahim Thiaw have served at UNEP – as Director of the Law Division and as Deputy Executive Director respectively. Join this dialogue as we discuss the role of environmental conventions and UNEP in global environmental governance. Register here...

This side event will present the latest information available on land-related SDG indicators that are showcased on the SDGs dashboard. The event will emphasize how Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) can play a key role in accelerating achievement of the SDGs and Building Back Better in light of the COVID-10 pandemic. The event will include government representatives and SDG custodians in a dynamic panel discussion of these issues. Land governance has strong relationships with social, economic, and ecological development around the world, and is thus crucial to achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Maintaining and restoring land resources can play a vital role in tackling climate change, securing biodiversity and maintaining crucial ecosystem services, while ensuring shared prosperity and well-being. Achieving land degradation neutrality (LDN) can become an accelerator of achieving SDGs across the board. As the Inter-agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators began evaluating the tier status of indicators, it became clear that there was a lack of awareness of the status of progress, as well as the data and information about these land-related indicators. In response, the Land Portal Foundation and the Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) launched  Land and the SDGs dashboard in September 2017 to make information related to the land indicators in the SDGs widely available. This dashboard has served this purpose for nearly five years and has been completely revamped and updated in collaboration with custodian agencies, including the FAO, UNCCD, UNEP, UNHABITAT, the World Bank, and others, to provide widespread access to this key information. Register here...

  Land defenders of all horizons, join the UNCCD for our fourth global youth webinar on land jobs for youth and discover creative technologies and business models that help land users to avoid, reduce or reverse land degradation while increasing productivity. While the climate change conference COP26 has called for more meaningful and effective climate actions by governments, young people around the world continue to demonstrate resilience and persevere towards creating a better world. Combining innovation, ambition and pragmatism, young community organizers will speak about how they are building a new culture of entrepreneurship through land preservation. Get inspired to imagine and transform sound and sustainable land-use ideas into green and profitable businesses! Have you registered yet? Save the date: 16 December, 2021 2 to 3:30 GMT/UTC https://unccd-int.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Ymhkt7jCSFCYhKmVAMKNFQ