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With the right information about land, and the right tools to use it, countries can work together with Earth observation organizations toward building back better after the COVID-19 pandemic. But collaboration between data experts and data users is needed to make sure the information is right. Today, over 100 decision makers will have their say in a Data Quality Standards Workshop being hosted virtually by the GEO LDN Initiative.   The idea is straightforward – if we can optimize what we do where, we can bring land back into balance. In turn, this can help us bring nature, climate and the people’s needs, such as food and energy, into balance. And in the process, we can stabilize the primary driver for emerging infectious diseases like COVID-19, which is land use change.  But getting this done requires unprecedented cooperation among the many providers and many users of that information. Today, those end users will have their say on improving the quality of data used to monitor land.  The good news is the necessary framework for success is in place. In 2015, world leaders agreed to 17 Global Goals, officially known as the Sustainable Development Goals, that have the power to create a better world. Under Goal 15 (Life on Land) is SDG Target 15.3 on land degradation neutrality, where countries are striving to avoid, reduce and reverse land degradation. To date, 123 countries are actively engaged and in 2019, over 140 countries reported on this target in a harmonized way for the first time.  Enhancing the monitoring data so that countries can take effective action has been taken on by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), an intergovernmental and inter-organizational body that brings countries and the major data providers together to solve Earth information challenges.  With the GEO LDN Initiative, they have taken on one of the most difficult challenges countries face: harmonizing the myriad of data options and analytical tools into a work stream that is open to all (efficiency and flexibility), capable of meeting the needs of countries in a consistent way (comparability), and capable of empowering countries in the application of complex data sets (national ownership). Thanks to a timely pledge from the government of Germany, data providers have collaboratively contributed to a set of minimum data quality standards, and these are now being previewed by the policy makers in countries – the ultimate end users of the data.  The countries and organizations collaborating on the GEO LDN Initiative have reached a critical juncture in producing a major upgrade. Turning this aspiration into action means doing the right things in the right places at the right scale; a holistic approach on how we use and manage land in order for the world to build back better. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, in his International Mother Earth Day message, summarized it best: “We need to turn the recovery into a real opportunity to do things right for the future.”  Read more: GEO Partnership Launches LDN Initiative to Link Global and Local Data for SDG Monitoring Land Degradation Neutrality. Why it matters, how it's done Scientific Conceptual Framework for Land Degradation Neutrality

The UNCCD CSO panel has released the next issue of its bimonhtly newsletter. The newsletter highlights the role of civil society organizations in the time of the global COVID-19 crisis, inviting testimonials from CSOs that have adjusted their actions to provide assistance to partners and beneficiaries during the pandemic.

In the time of crisis, people rely on each other for strength and support, finding creative ways to stay connected and positive. On Earth Day 22 April 2020, UNCCD Land Ambassador Ricky Kej delivered a one-of-a-kind music event, bringing together musicians from around the world for an online experience shared by a multimillion global audience. More than 40 artists from six countries, including five Grammy Award winners, volunteered their talents to support the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.       Exceptional situations call for exceptional response. We must reflect on how we, as individuals and as global communities, can make a significant positive change  and use our talents and creativity to inspire action. — Ricky Kej, UNCCD Land Ambassador Baaba Maal, another Land Ambassador, joined the concert from Senegal where he works to assist communities facing the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, the musicians and singers performed UNCCD Land Anthem, introduced by the Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw.  We need to mobilize the world to forge a stronger, healthier and more productive life in harmony with nature for years to come. — Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD Executive Secretary The mega-concert was showcased live on national and international TV, radio, streaming platforms and social media, including UNCCD and other UN accounts. This event is one of initiatives supported by UNCCD to engage the audience around the issue of sustainable land use as a way to ensure a healthy future for people and the planet. Next, UNCCD Land Ambassadors will join the Desertification and Drought Day global event on 17 June, which will also take place online. See more: Watch the concert in replay UNCCD Land Ambassadors 2020 Desertification and Drought Day UNCCD Land Heroes campaign  

The Global Mechanism of the UNCCD and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in collaboration with multiple partners, have published the Briefing note and Technical report Land Degradation Neutrality in Small Island Developing States. The report presents the Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) vision created by Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and shows how SIDS are linking their sustainable land management agendas with areas relevant to achieving their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). More specifically, the report addresses two key policy areas: Fostering policy coherence by integrating national priorities and other commitments into the LDN targets: improving livelihoods and reducing poverty (SDG 1), food and water security (SDGs 2 and 6), and climate change mitigation and adaptation (SDG 13)  Preventing migration and conflict (SDG 16) and safeguarding life on land (SDG 15) The key messages from the report: Land degradation undermines the economic potential in SIDS because it exacerbates the environmental vulnerabilities unique to SIDS, such as climate change, flash floods, soil erosion, lagoon siltation, coastal erosion and sea level rise LDN contributes to achieving multiple SDGs in SIDS, preserving biodiversity and increasing resilience to climate change Using high-resolution data is an important step for SIDS Building partnerships is key to ensuring big actions for small islands Investment in land will be important for SIDS to drive transformational change, and synergies across all sectors are needed SIDS are progressing towards translating LDN commitments into actions, with a focus on the sustainable management of forests, agriculture and land use planning Land-use management and the urbanization process are very complex issues for SIDS due to their limited land resources. The adverse effects of climate change and land degradation now pose an existential threat to SIDS. Thus, achieving Land Degradation Neutrality is a practical and effective means for SIDS to achieve multiple SDGs, including land-based adaptation and mitigation actions to address the challenges posed by climate change. Under the Land Degradation Neutrality Target Setting Programme (LDN TSP) of the UNCCD, 24 SIDS have committed to establish LDN targets and associated measures. They will use the best available data on land degradation trends and baselines, adopt informed sustainable land management policies and practices, engage all relevant stakeholders, and identify concrete opportunities for implementing LDN Transformative Projects and Programmes on the ground. LDN Target Setting Programme participant SIDS include Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Cape Verde, Comoros, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Mauritius, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles, Suriname, Timor-Leste, Trinidad and Tobago. Read more: Technical report Land Degradation Neutrality in Small Island Developing States Briefing note Land Degradation Neutrality in Small Island Developing States Achieving LDN LDN target setting programme  

The GEF Scientific and Advisory Panel (GEF STAP) has released the Guidelines for Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN). LDN aims to preserve land resources by ensuring no net loss of healthy and productive land through a combination of measures that avoid, reduce and reverse land degradation. Achieving neutrality requires estimating the likely impacts of land-use and land management decisions, then counterbalancing anticipated losses through strategically planned rehabilitation or restoration of degraded land within the same land type. LDN can only be achieved through coordinated efforts to integrate its objectives with land-use planning and land management, underpinned by sound understanding of the human-environment system and effective governance mechanisms.  The technical report was written by Annette Cowie in close collaboration with Graciela Metternicht, both former UNCCD SPI members. The document was prepared in close consultation to ensure continuity with the LDN Conceptual Framework as well as guidance developed by the Global Mechanism of UNCCD. The timeliness of the publication reflects the fact that land use change and destruction of natural habitats is the primary indirect driver behind emerging infectious diseases. The no-net loss approach of LDN is a holistic policy response to optimizing land use decisions that can keep food, energy and nature in balance. Read more: Guidelines for Land Degradation Neutrality Achieving LDN

Dear friends, We are all living through a difficult period at the moment, so thank you for taking the time to engage in this important event. Fifty years ago today, Americans mobilized the world to demand a new contract with nature. Earth Day was born. The very name of this day, of our planet, tells us a lot about who we are as a species. We are creatures of the earth, the soil, the land. Without healthy and productive land, we could not live. Can you even imagine a planet on which nothing grew? No crops. No grass. No trees. It is unthinkable. And yet we, the people of the earth, do not treat the land with the respect it deserves. As humanity grows larger and wealthier, agriculture, urban spaces and infrastructure are eating into the land. Almost three quarters of all land has been transformed from its natural state, and the pace of conversion is accelerating. Two billion hectares of once productive land, an area larger than South America, has been degraded, adversely affecting billions of people. The health and productivity of existing arable land is declining, accelerated by climate change. This has caused many problems and is storing up more for the future. An inability to feed growing populations. Falling biodiversity and shrinking ecosystems, hitting the planet’s ability to provide basic services. Accelerating climate change. Our unhealthy relationship with the land, with nature, is also in part responsible for the COVID-19 crisis.   COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by a virus that spilled over from a wild animal to humans. It has wreaked havoc on lives, livelihoods, economies and communities. It signals that our social contract with nature is a global priority now, more than ever before. It tells us that land health, ecosystem health and human health are tied together. Ladies and Gentlemen, Since Earth Day was created, we have put in place many systems and processes to try and arrest the decline of land.   We have the Rio Conventions on biodiversity, desertification and climate change, and its Paris Agreement. We have the Global Goals. These are all milestones to be proud of. If we are being honest, though, we have to say that the world has yet to deliver on the promises made under these agreements. We need to mobilize the world to forge a stronger, healthier and more productive life in harmony with nature for years to come. Today, as part of these efforts, we are going to specifically look at agriculture and climate change. In this regard, let me offer three insights. Insight one   Agriculture is hugely vulnerable to climate change, but it is also a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, when fully accounted for, emissions from agriculture are much higher than generally reported. Agricultural emissions are not 23 percent, but 37 percent, of all emissions when you add the pre- and post-production costs. Costs such as refrigeration, food transportation or fertilizer production. Insight two Globalization means that land degradation today is driven, primarily, by poor land uses to provide for distant, not local, consumers; for example, urban or foreign consumers.   This removes the oversight consumers had over their local ecosystems, ensuring they functioned well. This disconnect is aiding agricultural emissions. Insight three Land-based mitigation actions are effective now, not later because this potential falls with every year of delayed action. What’s more, harnessing that potential now brings additional benefits that go beyond mitigation. Enhancing land anywhere enhances health and life everywhere. Ladies and Gentlemen,   Fundamentally, the challenge we face with agriculture is one of land management. We need to produce more food for growing populations while reducing emissions. We need to do so without further expanding and degrading land. To do so, we need to sustainably manage the land. With this in mind, please allow me to lay out four pathways to a meaningful social contract with nature in the context of agriculture, land-use and climate change. The first pathway is treating land as a limiting factor in our development and land-use planning processes.   Much of human development has been built on the idea that the planet is limitless. A field stops producing? Slash and burn the forest to create a new one. Cities getting overcrowded? Expand out into the countryside. Roads are too busy? Widen existing roads or build new ones. We can’t keep doing this. If natural land continues to be converted for agriculture to feed a projected global population of 10 billion, only 10 per cent of natural land will be left by 2050.   Continuing with business as usual will increase land emissions while stripping the land’s capacity to sequester carbon. All development must be based on the idea that land is a limiting factor. This brings us to the second pathway, which is, improving the use of existing land As demand for agricultural land grows, tradeoffs among competing objectives in land grow too. But we must not burn our way to prosperity and damage the land systems we live off.     Instead, let us forge global partnerships that promise a more prosperous future by ensuring we plan and use our land well; doing the right things in the right place at the right scales. For example, planning urban spaces so that they don’t encroach on agricultural land. And by ensuring we only use the land we have already converted. We need to incentivize agricultural techniques that keep land heathy or recover lost productivity – such as conservation agriculture and agroforestry. Sustainable land management techniques keep land productive, produce more with less, and slow land conversion. The third pathway is recovering what has been lost.      We are gearing up for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. I have more good news. The land-degradation neutrality targets nations are setting under the convention I head foresee great restoration plans. The restoration of land is central to healthy agriculture, a cooler planet, restoring biodiversity and re-igniting economic growth at a time of great economic turmoil. Let me explain with an example. The Great Green Wall for the Sahara and Sahel Initiative involves 11 African countries. It’s an 8,000-kilometer long ecosystem innovation along the southern border of the Sahara Desert: from Dakar, Senegal, on Africa’s west coast; to Djibouti by the Red Sea, on the east. This programme is sequestering carbon in the soil – up to 250 million tonnes of carbon – through new vegetation cover and increased organic matter. But it’s doing a whole lot more. It’s improving access to water, food and energy for communities that typically lived off wild plants, trees and animals. Partnerships with ethical supply chains from Europe and the United States are helping poor households to produce, sustainably, goods for local and global consumption. Local governments are creating jobs for the young people that terrorists preyed on. And rural women are owning land.   Inspired by this model, parties to our convention are replicating it widely, in what they often refer to as achieving land degradation neutrality. The fourth pathway is encouraging more responsible consumption and production What we buy, where we buy it and how we use it has a massive impact on the land. One-third of all food produced each year is lost or wasted. This is a footprint of 1.4 billion hectares, close to 30 per cent of the world’s agricultural land area. But it isn’t just food. Food with a large environmental footprint and throwaway fashion are also damaging the land. Changing our diets and shopping behaviours can free up land and lower carbon emissions. Dietary change alone can free up between 80 and 240 million hectares of land. We must change attitudes to consumption and production – as the UNCCD is doing with this year’s Desertification and Drought Day in June, by encouraging people to look at sustainable use of food, feed and fibre. But personal choices will only matter where they are backed by full transparency in the value chain, allowing consumers to make the right choices. Business must step up too. Ladies and gentlemen, Time is running on, so let me conclude with a challenge to young people, who are the torchbearers of sustainable development.   Children, young people and millennials make up 77 percent of the global population. You are the future. But even if this future is one of cities and technology, you are still people of the earth. Without land, you will have nothing. What personal choices will you make for the recovery effort from COVID-19 and for a healthier planet? I urge you, and everyone else, to recommit to what Earth Day is all about and mobilize the world to create a healthier future for all. Thank you! Download the speech