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The Group of friends (GOF) held a ministerial and high-level breakfast on 10 September 2019 in the sidelines of COP14 under the Co-Chairmanship Guðmundur Ingi Guðbrandsson, Minister of Environment and Natural resources of Iceland, and Penomwenyo Pohamba Shifeta, Minister of Environment and Tourism of Namibia.

On the road to the Climate Action Summit, the Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of India and President of COP14, His Excellency Mr. Prakash Javedkar, and the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Her Excellency Ms. Amina J. Mohammed, hosted a high-level luncheon on land and climate on 9 September 2019, on the margins of the UNCCD Fourteenth Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP14). The event was co-facilitated by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).    During the meeting, participants underscored that land resources are the basis for human health, livelihoods, food security, and for our economic, cultural and spiritual well-being. Some 25 per cent of the world’s land is degraded (IPCC, 2019), affecting the lives of 3.2 billion people, particularly smallholder farmers, those in rural communities and the world’s poorest populations (IPBES, 2018). Women in particular are on the daily frontline struggle to salvage the large area of agricultural land already affected by land degradation. And the stewardship of indigenous peoples is essential to safeguard the world’s remaining biodiversity. All vulnerable groups who depend on sustainable land management and who can contribute to land restoration need our support.  Participants welcomed the IPCC’s special report on Climate Change and Land which constitutes the first comprehensive study of the entire land-climate system. As such, they agreed that it is a fundamental contribution to global negotiations on climate change, biodiversity and sustainable land management, and calls for synergies between the Rio Conventions. The report provides a sound basis for ambitious actions contributing to climate change adaptation and mitigation, biodiversity conservation as well as to combat land degradation and enhance food security. Participants stressed that restoring degraded lands and achieving land degradation neutrality (SDG 15.3) provided an integrated solution to increase ecosystems and populations resilience as well as to enhance the capacity of our land for carbon sequestration. Land use must therefore be an integral part of the climate solution, rather than a cause of GHG emissions.  This will strengthen biodiversity conservation, increase livelihoods and human security. It will also curb emissions from degrading lands and help close the projected emissions gap between Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the Paris Agreement objectives. Most importantly, land degradation neutrality will improve the living conditions of affected populations and the health and productivity of their ecosystems.  Participants agreed that land restoration will deliver co-benefits to many Sustainable Development Goals and that the three Rio Conventions can actively work together to support restoration activities as an important contribution to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Participants agreed that the critical role of land restoration for climate mitigation and adaptation must be visible. The Climate Action Summit will send a strong political signal for more public funding and private investments to enable land restoration for impact at the scale needed, through gender-responsive, transformative projects and programmes that seek to generate and sustain fundamental and sustainable positive change. Every 1 USD invested in land restoration is expected to generate up to 10 USD in returns for society through more efficient agricultural practices, integrated water management, and vital ecosystem functions (GPFLR, 2018). Participants indicated that time had come to turn the vicious circle between land and climate into a virtuous one by reinforcing the positive elements of the relationship, helping to manage emissions on the one hand and adapting to climate impacts on the other. Participants therefore called for more concerted policy action, more investments, and more capacity to scale up land restoration to achieve land degradation neutrality. They expect the Nature-Based Solutions Coalition to propose concrete and ambitious actions at the Summit. Participants supported the global effort to achieve land degradation neutrality through ambitious initiatives such as the Bonn Challenge target of having at least 350 million hectares of degraded land under active restoration by 2030 and the Great Green Wall for the Sahara and Sahel Initiative. Participants also welcomed the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 (UN General Assembly resolution 73/284) as a unique opportunity to galvanize political will, increased investments, and action on the ground for land restoration at massive scale across the world.  Participants called for the UN Climate Action Summit to be the starting point for the establishment of a coalition of countries, to accelerate massive scaling up of land restoration activities worldwide, and to act as the building block of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030). A coalition of active countries could federate and accelerate the achievement of existing ecosystem restoration goals of all into the UN Decade – a decade of action and impact on the ground for the planet, for the people and for prosperity. Participants included Armenia, Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Fiji, Finland, France, Gambia, Germany, Haiti, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Morocco, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Peru, Republic of Korea, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, South Africa, Tajikistan, The United Kingdom, the European Union as well as CBD, GCF, GEF, FAO, IPBES, IPCC, UNCCD, UNDP, UNEP, UNFCCC, UNRC India and the World Bank. For further information, please contact:  Ms. Wagaki Wischnewski, wwischnewski@unccd.int, Cell: +91 74284 94332 Mr. Tim Christophersen, tim.christophersen@un.org, Cell : +254706044045 

On the road to the Climate Action Summit, the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Ms. Amina Mohammed and the Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of India and President of COP14 Mr. Prakash Javedkar, hosted a high-level luncheon on land and climate.

The Global Mechanism (GM) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) jointly hosted an evening reception at UNCCD COP 14 in New Delhi, India. The reception provided a platform to bring together esteemed guests and key actors from across Africa to network, exchange ideas on new initiatives and opportunities and strengthen partnerships and cooperation for a more sustainable future. Bringing together knowledge, insights and technical capacities can generate strong synergies, for more robust, effective and cost-efficient solutions to the complex land and climate problems with which Africa is facing. The AfDB and the Global Mechanism have been working together to strengthen the knowledge and capacity of African stakeholders to implement the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) targets, improve synergies and secure stronger international support and financing for their achievement. They also started to provide support to African countries in partnership with the Climate Commission for the Sahel Region (CCRS), CILSS and other regional partners in designing regional project in West Africa to reinforce resilience to climate change and achieve LDN.  The two institutions have hosted joint workshops, trainings, joint meetings and missions to support portfolio development of transformative projects across Africa. The plan sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to strengthen their cooperation and expand their current activities in Africa. Read more: UNCCD COP14 The Global Mechanism

New Delhi, 9 September 2019 – Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called on the international community to set up a global water action agenda as the central theme to achieve land degradation neutrality. He announced that India will restore an additional 5 million hectares of degraded land by 2030, raising the land to be restored in India to 26 million hectares.  Modi made the announcement when he opened the ministerial segment of the 14th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification that opened in New Delhi, India, a week ago. The restoration is part of India’s commitment to achieve land degradation neutrality, a flagship initiative under the UNCCD. To date, 122 of the 170 countries affected by land degradation have committed to achieve land degradation neutrality. India’s Initiative complements and strengthens two other previous initiatives, namely, the Changwon Initiative of the Republic of Korea and the Ankara Initiative of Türkiye, also launched at previous COPs.  Prakash Javadekar, India’s Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and the current COP14 President, also announced that the Delhi Declaration will be adopted from this special ministerial segment of the Conference.  The segment is meant to draw attention to the human face of desertification, land degradation and drought, he said, and ensured the stakeholders that “India has the COP presidency for the next 2 years. We will work with all of you and I can ensure that our positive actions will help us give a better earth to the future generations.” Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of Saint-Vincent The Grenadines, said, “The collective responses of nations globally have not measured up adequately or sufficiently to the enormous task at hand, so as to obviate disaster. Accordingly, COP 14 convened under the aegis of United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification is a seminal staging post in  humanity’s quest for a better and sustainable condition of our lives, living and production.”  Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations welcomed the Prime Ministers and other dignitaries to the Conference, and said, “we no longer have the luxury of spending the next 10 years meeting preparing the targets. We have two weeks to move our common agenda in the right direction to bend the curve on a planet of less than 2 degrees, towards action and impact.” She highlighted that 800m people are still going hungry and that crop yields are dropping, and demand for food is set to increase by 50 percent in the coming decades. Restoring 150 million hectares of farmland could feed 200 million more people every year. At the same time, it would provide greater resilience and over 30 billion dollars a year in increased income for small stakeholders and sink an additional 2 gigatones of carbon dioxide per year.  It is in these critical times where our individual and collective responsibilities will be needed, even more than they ever have been.  It is a massive effort but together we can lift and achieve the aspirations of the climate agenda,” she added. “The [Climate Action] Summit “is not the first and last stop. It is the first step towards concrete actions and we are asking commitments from our member states. I will say considerable engagement with financial sector is really important, since there is a barrier, if we don’t have resources. So, we are saying public funds, must move. We are not correct in saying the Green Climate Fund  doesn’t have money on the table, they do, and the states do make contributions that is a good signal towards the climate action summit in the next two weeks. It is continuous engagement, that is what it is about,” she added. Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD Executive Secretary, highlighted the present and inter-generational impacts of land degradation globally and underlined the plight of the children being born “whose future is not in the hands of the parents alone, but of humanity at large.” He drew attention to recent scientific assessments that revealed the harm caused by land degradation, stressed importance of the current COP in laying “the groundwork for change” for the five United Nations Summits to be held in New York soon, and said “combining our land with three little concepts of equality, partnerships and scale could take us a very long way towards our common goals.” Thiaw also concurred with Mr. Mohammed regarding the role of the private sector in ramping up land restoration particularly for vulnerable, rural and smallholder farmers, and clarified that the engagement with the private sector is not the same as privatizing land. COP14 President Javadekar said that, “combating desertification have to be a national goal. In India, we are already on the way of combating desertification, the green covering is rising in India. From 24% in the last 5 years, it has increased by nearly 15,000 square km and we are inching towards our target of having 33% of green cover.”  “If human actions have done damage to the world and the environment, now positive human actions will make a difference and will give a better earth for future generations,” he added.  Over 8,000 delegates, including ministers, heads of United Nations and intergovernmental bodies, youth, local governments, business leaders and representatives of non-governmental organizations are attending the Conference, whose theme is “Investing in Restoration to Unlock Opportunities.” COP14, which ends Friday, is expected to adopt over 30 decisions and a few country-led initiatives on the actions governments will take to reverse land degradation especially over the next two years, and also beyond.  Notes to editors India is a signatory to the United Nations Convention for Combating Desertification (UNCCD). The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) is the nodal Ministry of Government of India (GoI) that oversees implementation of the Convention in the country.  India’s population is projected to reach 1.7 billion by 2050. About 2 billion hectares of land – an area over three times the size of India – are degraded, but can be restored back to health. India was one of the first countries to commit to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal target of achieving land degradation neutrality (LDN). India is the current President of COP14 and will serve for 2 years. As with previous COP sessions, a high-level segment is in progress to raise political momentum for the negotiations and boost the engagement of stakeholders in the Convention’s implementation.  About UNCCD The UNCCD is an international agreement on good land stewardship. It helps people, communities and countries to create wealth, grow economies and secure enough food and water and energy, by ensuring land users have an enabling environment for sustainable land management. Through partnerships, the Convention’s 197 Parties set up robust systems to manage drought promptly and effectively. Good land stewardship based on a sound policy and science helps integrate and accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, builds resilience to climate change and prevents biodiversity loss. Background information and resources For background materials, including photos for use, and other resources are available here. The opening statements will also be uploaded on this page as soon as they are available to the secretariat Free photographs for use with credits are available here. Contact Information For further information, please contact:  Ms. Wagaki Wischnewski, wwischnewski@unccd.int, Cell: +91 74284 94332 Mr. Abhishek Srivatsava, asrivatsava@unccd.int, Cell: +91 99991 80790 Ms. Yukie Hori, yhori@unccd.int, Cell: +91 74284 94331

An enchanting cultural programme organized by the government of India to welcome the participants of the high-level segment of UNCCD COP14 in New Delhi became one of the main conference highlights. The key performers included musicians Ricky Kej, Baaba Maal and Inna Modj, who will grant their talent and popularity to help promote the UNCCD mission as the new Land Ambassadors. You can read about their work and their commitment to the development issues here.