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Executive Secretary Mr. Ibrahim Thiaw appointed Ms. Louise Baker, a national of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as the Managing Director of the Global Mechanism of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).   Ms. Baker joined the UNCCD secretariat in March 2011 and has been serving as Chief of the External Relations, Policy and Advocacy unit since February 2014.   

Is it time for a new social contract for nature?  A high-level panel moderated by UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw held on the Desertification and Drought Day observed every year on 17 June, discussed this issue, in the context of a post-COVID-19 recovery and government actions to build back better.   While COVID-19 exposed the vulnerability of health systems across the world and varying impacts on access to food at country-level, the panelists stressed the importance of both environmental sustainability and international cooperation in the post COVID-19 recovery efforts.  “COVID-19 is testing us all, and our response has to be inclusive and swift to ensure that we not only survive the pandemic but also thrive after it passes,” said Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, Minister of Climate Change and Environment, United Arab Emirates.    He said the UAE acknowledged the seriousness of the situation early on and leveraged agricultural technologies and supported local farmerswhile strengthening international supply chains, in cooperation with other countries” to address the many challenges the country faced.  He said technology will be used for land restoration in the country and stressed that environmental sustainability would be at the core of the recovery plans and screened a video showing how the country is using technology to overcome water scarcity to grow rice..  Ms Marieme Bekaye, Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, Mauritania, and current Chair of the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and Sahel Initiative, said the country has a small industry, is highly dependent on food imports and many people lost their jobs due to COVID-19.  The country has gained important lessons for the country’s agro-pastoral sector, in particular, and for Africa which is highly impacted by climate change and dependent on food supplies from other countries. Among these are political will for crisis management, predictability to introduce response measures quickly and multi-sectoral resource mobilization.   She underlined the need for stability in funding, better environmental data collection and more innovation and technology for the regional Great Green Wall for the Sahara and Sahel Initiative.  Mr. Saboto Caesar, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries, Rural Transformation and Industry, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, highlighted the constraints Small Island States face. With only 18,000 acres of agricultural land, there is extreme competition of land for housing, infrastructure and other livelihood needs.    He described the elaborate COVID-19 package for agriculture set up to make food more accessible in the country, which included redoubling efforts to increase food imports and exports, promoting sustainable farming and drought tolerant crops and setting up food banks.    India’s Prime Minister had announced the release of  “20 trillion Rupees (over USD260 billion), equivalent to 10% of India’s Gross Domestic Product, for various sectors, including the nature-based solution, to overcome the COVID pandemic,” said Mr. Babul Supriyo, Minister of State, Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, India.     He underlined India's ambitious target of achieving restoring 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 and a recovery of the forest cover by 2 percent.     “We stand by each other in this crucial time of pandemic to the need of land which is the most significant entity for our survival,” he added.    Francesco Le Camera, Director General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) stressed the potential for creating new jobs through renewable energy solutions.  “Placing the energy transition at the centre of COVID-19 recovery will enable us to overcome the current economic downturn and tackle the climate crisis,” he said, and added that the sector had the potential to create up to 100 million jobs.  “Renewable energy solutions not only bring socioeconomic gains and create much needed jobs. They are also central in combating desertification and land degradation, providing for climate and community resilience by boosting energy access, water security and food sustainability. A green recovery based on renewables can put the world on the path towards a safe, just and sustainable future,” Le Camera said.    The 90-minute event, which was streamed live via Zoom and other social media has been viewed by nearly 6,000 people in less than 24 hours and is available here https://bit.ly/2UYxbr1.  Desertification and Drought Day, is a United Nations observance day held on 17 June every year since 1995, with celebrations taking place in all UN member countries.   The focus in 2020 was the degradation of the land driven by the need to produce more and more food, animal feed and the fibre used in clothing.   This has led to a huge waste in resources, at a time when nearly a billion people are without enough food and the competition for productive land is growing.   This year’s observance emphasized consumers rights to access what they need from the land, but to doing so responsibly by rewarding the producers and suppliers who taking care of the land sustainably.    For more information, contact: Wagaki Wischnewski, wwischnewski@unccd.int 

The UNCCD joins the voices of many in congratulating Dr. Rattan Lal on being awarded the 2020 World Food Prize for developing and mainstreaming a soil-centric approach to increasing food production that restores and conserves natural resources and mitigates climate change. Very few people can be credited with transforming global agriculture, impacting the wellbeing of millions of small-scale and subsistence farmers and pastoralists and providing the roadmap towards healthy ecosystems, all at the same time. Rattan Lal has achieved this through four decades of tireless effort focused on the interface of science, policy and practice. His humble claim has been that he has been at the right place and the right time often in his career. But the reality is he is the global leader in addressing what food security, energy, biodiversity, water resources and climate change have in common: soil, how it is managed, and the pivotal role of carbon. Indeed, Dr. Lal is at the forefront of a solution-based approach to addressing the environmental challenges of our time based on “producing more from less” through optimizing inputs and minimizing waste. The impact of Dr. Lal’s work and what it means for the future of humanity and the planet are truly extraordinary. Even in the face of a global population that is projected to surpass 10 billion by 2050, the economics of taking action are very encouraging. The soil-centric approach to sustainable land management practices introduced by Dr. Lal is the key to closing yield-potential gaps and drawing down carbon from the atmosphere. It is estimated that soils can sequester around 20 PgC (petagrams of carbon) in 25 years, more than 10 percent of the anthropogenic emissions. Moreover, reaching 95% of potential maximum crop yields could create an additional 2.3 billion tonnes of crop production per year, equivalent to a potential gain of USD 1.4 trillion, helping ensure the well-being of the more than 570 million farms in the world, over 90% of which are small and family-run. Named as a Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University in 2011, Dr. Lal has had an extraordinarily productive career spanning four decades, the first half of which was based in Africa. It is there where understanding the link between soils, people and ecosystems in a time of unprecedented environmental change became his passion. With 2,300 publications accumulating 85,000 citations to date, he is one of the most highly cited scientists in the world. His accolades, too numerous to list, include being a member of the IPCC which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 and being regularly included in the Thomson Reuters list of the World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds.  He has extended his impact exponentially through the training of numerous agents of change:  +160 graduate students & postdocs and +525 visiting scholars & professionals who have returned to their home institutions with the skills necessary to join a worldwide network of experts working on these issues. Serving as head of four of the most important soil science societies in the world, Dr. Lal’s leadership has ensured that relevant science is being brought into practice through sustainable land management and soil rehabilitation. And perhaps most important of all, Dr. Lal regularly engages decision makers at all levels, helping bridge the vast divide between science and policy. This has included co-authoring the visionary 2012 white paper which prepared the groundwork for Land Degradation Neutrality, which is now a global target among the Sustainable Development Goals. These are the qualities and achievements which led to his selection for a Global Drylands Champion at the UNCCD’s eleventh Conference of the Parties held in 2011 and to the Science-Policy Interface of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in 2017 where he has served with distinction. Rattan Lal has been instrumental to ensuring science underpins the policy decisions of the UNCCD. As a member of the Science-Policy Interface (SPI) of the UNCCD since 2018, he and Dr. Jean-Luc Chotte led the coordination activities with both the IPCC and ITPS through to COP 14. The work with IPCC led to land degradation neutrality (LDN) being recognized as a key response option for the achievement of multiple benefits, including climate change mitigation and adaptation (see key messages in the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land.) In addition to these efforts, Dr. Lal served on the advisory board for the Global Land Outlook. He also was a co-author of Realising the Carbon Benefits of Sustainable Land Management Practices, the technical report which ultimately led many of the key elements of decision 16/COP.14. In the current biennium, he and Dr. Marijana Kapović Solomun led the SPI effort to review the guidelines for Monitoring, Reporting and Verification soil organic carbon which have been produced by ITPS for the Global Soil Partnership.   

On the occasion of the Desertification and Drought Day, the UNCCD CSO panel has released the latest issue of its bimonhtly newsletter. The newsletter introduces the new website of the CSO panel, informs on the appointment of the SPI observer alternate and gives information on several initiatives undertaken by CSOs in the Republic of Korea, China, Antigua and Barbuda, Azerbaijan and Africa.

Canada is proud to provide $6 million to accelerate implementation of UNCCD Gender Action Plan

The cost and consequences of land use change are underestimated as demonstrated by COVID-19. Investing in the over 400 million hectares of land earmarked for restoration will help to build back better and safeguard our relationship with nature.