Events

The 19th meeting of the Science-Policy Interface (SPI) will take place on 19-21 March 2024 in Bonn, Germany.   The meeting will bring together the leading scientists and high-level experts to discuss the objectives and deliverables of the SPI work programme according to Decision 18/COP.15.    

The UNCCD SPI Science Day brings together a diverse and highly-engaged audience of participants, including scientists, policy-makers, practitioners, students, journalists and representatives of civil society organizations (CSOs) and development agencies. This event is scheduled on Saturday, 14 May 2022: 8:00 – 13:00 Session 1: Land restoration Opening Reaching a desirable future What we measure we can manage better The next generation of key actors 13:00 – 16:00 Session 2: Drought IPCC AR6 - Implications for Drought Risk Measuring Progress towards Drought resilience Nature-Based Solutions for Drought Risk Reduction 16:00 –17:15 Closing session

The Science Day will provide a forum for brief presentations, expert statements and interactive discussions on support for planning and implementation of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) at country level. Experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) among others will provide insights into how actions to avoid, reduce and reverse land degradation can also halt the loss of biodiversity and support land-based climate change adaptation and mitigation, through pursuit of LDN.

This session was dedicated to the presentation of the Special Report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems that had been developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), known as the Special Report on Climate Change and Land. This Special Report was approved and accepted at the 50th Session of the IPCC held from 2 to 7 August 2019 in Geneva, Switzerland.

In this session, seven presenters delivered 3-minute overview talks on a wide range of topics related to enhancing the enabling environment for LDN (see below). The presenters delivered key messages and then posed a key question to the audience. The audience was then asked to form groups of 5-6 members. These groups then received one key question on a note card and were asked to discuss and report back on their question. The small groups were so engaged in their discussions and reporting back their results that we allocated additional time to this session. We were able to give small groups the opportunity to report on their discussion to the broader audience.