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Bonn, Germany, 18 February 18, 2025 – A landmark collaboration is taking shape in the global fight against land degradation. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to accelerate efforts in sustainable land and water management, biodiversity conservation and climate resilience in support of the sustainable development agenda. A partnership for sustainable growth Land degradation, desertification and drought pose critical challenges worldwide, affecting ecosystems, economies and communities. Recognizing the urgency of these issues, UNCCD and GGGI are joining forces to create innovative solutions that integrate environmental sustainability with economic growth.  This collaboration is firmly rooted in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the objectives of the Rio Conventions, ensuring a holistic approach to sustainable land management. Under the MoU, UNCCD and GGGI will leverage their expertise to: Develop and implement joint programs focused on sustainable land and water management, biodiversity conservation and climate resilience. Enhance resource mobilization efforts to secure funding and technical support for land restoration initiatives. Engage the private sector to drive investment and technical innovation in sustainable land management projects. Promote knowledge-sharing and capacity-building through training programs, policy dialogues and best practice exchanges. Design green investment strategies to support countries in achieving Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) and drought resilience targets. A shared vision for impactful action By working together, UNCCD and GGGI aim to unlock new opportunities for land restoration and ecosystem conservation. Their collaboration will also extend to joint advisory services, feasibility studies and publications that inform and inspire action on the ground. “I am pleased to announce this strategic partnership between UNCCD and GGGI, which marks a significant step in our collective efforts to combat land degradation, enhance biodiversity conservation and build resilience against climate change," stated Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD Executive Secretary. "This MoU is a testament to our shared commitment to a future where land is valued, protected and restored for the benefit of people and the planet.” GGGI Director-General Sang-Hyup Kim echoed this sentiment: 'The collaboration with UNCCD reflects GGGI’s strong commitment to land restoration and biodiversity conservation. This partnership will not only shed light on the financial and policy elements. GGGI looks forward to a powerful collaboration with UNCCD to tackle climate challenges related to land degradation, water management and drought.'" Looking ahead: Turning ambition into action As the world faces escalating environmental challenges, the partnership between UNCCD and GGGI represents a critical step forward. With a shared mission to create sustainable, climate-resilient landscapes, their collaboration will support countries in transforming policies into tangible action, ensuring that economic development is both environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive. Media contact: press@unccd.int  About UNCCD The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is an international agreement on good land stewardship. It helps people, communities and countries create wealth, grow economies and secure enough food, clean water and energy by ensuring land users 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 sound policy and science helps integrate and accelerate achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, builds resilience to climate change and prevents biodiversity loss.  About GGGI  The Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) was established in 2012 as a treaty-based intergovernmental organization at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development. It supports its 49 Member States and 29 Partner countries in transitioning to a green growth model that integrates poverty reduction, social inclusion, environmental sustainability and economic growth. Operating in over 51 countries, GGGI helps nations meet their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Paris Agreement commitments. Currently, GGGI is implementing 10+ projects funded by AFD across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific, focusing on green investment, climate-resilient agriculture, the circular economy and sustainable solutions in forestry, mobility, energy and industry — all aligned with GGGI’s Programmatic Solutions. 

Making peace with nature means signing an amnesty with ourselves. It means reducing our footprint on the planet, our emissions and our pollution. It means producing twice as much food by 2050 to meet the needs of a growing population, while respecting the ambitions of the 30 by 30. Producing more food in quantity and quality, while extracting less fresh water, and reducing the expansion of agricultural land. This means destroying less grazing land, controlling deforestation and restoring billions of hectares of degraded land. Making peace with nature means anticipating natural disasters more effectively, being better prepared to deal with them and building our resilience to drought. There's no doubt that this is a challenge. But not an impossible task. To succeed, we need to revisit our relationships with nature, and stop taking it for granted. Nature has always given us everything we need: from the food we eat to the water we drink, to the air we breathe. Whether it's raining, snowing or windy, nature provides us with the right clothing. Have we ever stopped to thank her for all the services it has always provided to humanity? s stewards of our land, have we ever done a proper audit and tried to reconcile our direct debits with our balances? By extracting so many resources from the entrails of the earth, we are leaving a sick planet to our children. Never before have we had so many victims of natural disasters; never before have we had so many displaced populations; never before have we had so much vulnerability and precariousness. For many people, in too many countries, the only progress they see is in growing inequalities, destruction and despair. Consider this: Rich or poor, we depend on the capacity of our soil to meet our basic needs. We depend on nature's ability to withstand droughts and generate the water resources essential to our lives. This is why Cali is such an important milestone. But allow me to remind you all that our last stop for this year will be Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. COP16 to the UNCCD is also crucial as 197 Parties are expected to adopt landmark decisions on drought and land restauration and anything that affects livelihoods of those who have no other assets than their land including women, youth and indigenous people. Looking forward to welcoming you from 2-13 December in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The world’s population is on track to reaching 10 billion by 2050, just as the planetary systems that sustain life on Earth are being pushed to their limits — and with them, our ability to provide food and water and to prevent large-scale displacements, rippling economic shocks and conflict.

Madame President, Dear UNEP Executive Director, Excellencies, Presidents and chairs of COPs Ministers, Dear colleagues Executive Secretaries of MEAs, Honorable Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to start by thanking the President of UNEA (my sister Leila Ben Ali) and the Executive Director of UNEP (my other sister Inger Andersen) for dedicating an entire day of UNEA6 to the Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs). This is a real credit to UNEP. UNEA is one of the important platforms to discuss these issues. Thirty years after the signing of the Rio conventions, and more than fifty years after the creation of some of the MEAs represented here, we must face the facts: the implementation of these treaties cannot be done in silos. We cannot be effective if the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. Even less so if all the work done by the national focal point for one convention is ignored, or worse, brushed aside by another focal point. Putting things in order therefore begins at home, at the national level. International partners and development agencies, where appropriate, should play their part. MEA secretariats should help engineer cooperation and technical support. In this respect, institutions such as UNEP and Assemblies such as UNEA have a historic responsibility and a critical role to play in harmonizing the work and focus of the various MEAs as we face a multitude of interconnected crises. About the triple planetary crisis, indeed we face a climate crisis, a pollution crisis and a nature crisis. I would be remiss, as head of the UNCCD, not to insist that the nature crisis includes the immense crisis of land and drought, which is currently affecting more than 3 billion people, causing food insecurity, water scarcity and forced displacements. Action on the land is a powerful force for unity. The health of the land determines the food we eat, the water we drink, the quality of the air we breathe, the clothes we wear and many other services that contribute to our well-being. But the damage we inflict on our land poses a serious threat to world peace, and to the global economy. Similarly, the links between land and pollution are obvious. Air pollution is amplified by sand and dust storms. While plastic pollution affects rivers, lakes and oceans, the bulk of the stock stays in land affecting food production, people and the earth system as a whole. The good news is that there are solutions to these serious problems. They are well within our reach and this is literally in our hands. Make no mistake: the best solutions are those that tackle several challenges at once. We must slow down and adapt to climate change, protect and restore nature and biodiversity, reverse land degradation and desertification, and end pollution and waste. We don’t have the luxury of dedicating Monday to climate or pollution, Tuesday to biodiversity and only think that we can wait until Wednesday to tackle Land degradation. These issues are like communicating vessels and we have to address all these challenges at once! The scientific community is increasingly moving from sounding the alarm to signposting solutions that require concerted efforts. However, progress on turning commitments into transformative action must accelerate. Rapidly. Coherently. Consistently. Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen, 2024 represents a new opportunity for us all: The three Rio conventions will hold their COPs consecutively at the end of this year. We already had a successful CMS COP a few days ago. At the UNCCD COP16 in Saudi Arabia - in December – we will embark on a unique journey – one that brings all communities of policy and practice to join forces towards a common goal: that of making land healthy again. Parties assembled in Riyadh at UNCCD COP16 will present a groundbreaking action agenda for all MEAs to reverse degradation and to accelerate efforts to restore 1.5 billion hectares of land by 2030. Healthy and productive land is the operational link between climate action and biodiversity conservation. Linking up action on land will allow us to take advantage of the synergies that build resilience, mitigate the impacts of climate change, safeguard biodiversity, provide food security for billions around the world, and transform the way we manage the environment and consume its bounty. And this is everyone’s effort. We must ensure that the work on each MEA commitment dovetails with and amplifies the work of the others. By forging synergies with UN entities and conventions, we can amplify our impact, leverage resources, and foster greater coherence in our collective response to global environmental challenges. For example: aligning land degradation neutrality targets with nationally determined contributions and the new biodiversity targets can maximize the impact of nature-positive investments and significantly diminish the huge gap between commitment and action. After all, we are facing one single global challenge – the sustainability of the planet and striving for an environment of peace and prosperity. Martin Luther King Jr once said: “We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now”. So, while MEAs have individual mandates, they ultimately have the same ambition: protecting the people and the planet. Let us make 2024 a pivotal year for environmental multilateralism. The science is clear and sobering. Long-term planning and cooperation are of the essence. But urgent action is needed. Recent years have proven that environmental multilateralism is working. It remains our best shot at tackling the complex and interconnected environmental challenges. Let’s take it! Thank you.

Abidjan, Beijing, Cairo, November 3, 2023  – For the first time ever, the Presidents of the last Conference of Parties (COP) of each of the three Rio Conventions have decided to join forces. With three weeks to go before the opening of COP28 in Dubai, the Presidents: Underlined the urgency of the situation and the inextricable links between climate change, desertification and loss of biodiversity; Called for a coordinated approach both at international and national levels to tackle these issues in a holistic way; Pleaded for more cooperation between the three COPs and their secretariats; And asked for urgent, concrete, measures to protect the world population, environment, lands and biodiversity to ensure a sustainable future for new generations. They did so in a historic joint declaration released today, signed by: Alain-Richard Donwahi, former Minister of Water and Forestry of the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire and President of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification’s COP15 (UNCCD) Sameh Shoukry, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Egypt and President of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s COP27 (UNFCCC) Huang Runqiu, Minister of Ecology and Environment of the People’s Republic of China and President of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s COP15 (CBD) At the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio in 1992, the international community decided to create three different conventions to fight climate change, halt desertification and prevent loss of biodiversity. However, as these three phenomena accelerate, the interconnections between them amplify, creating a vicious circle. Breaking this vicious circle requires a holistic vision and a coordinated approach. With this common declaration, the three Presidents hope to open a new chapter in the fight against climate change, desertification and biodiversity loss, one of coordinated efforts to face the urgency. About UNCCD’s COP15 The Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) brings together leaders from the Convention's signatory countries, the private sector, NGOs and civil society. It aims to combat desertification and mitigate the effects of drought, promote sustainable land management, rehabilitate and restore degraded lands and ecosystems, mobilize financial resources, develop technologies to support affected countries, and strengthen international cooperation and partnerships to address these phenomena. Like the COP on biodiversity, the COP on desertification meets every two years. Its last major meeting was held in May 2022 in Abidjan. From the previous summit until the next held in Riyadh for December 2024, the COP on Desertification has been chaired by the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, represented by Alain-Richard Donwahi. Media contacts: Emilie Villemin +33 6 81 11 68 06  COP15Desertification(at)apcoworldwide.com

While plastic has many valuable uses, our dependency on it comes at high environmental, social, economic and health costs. The qualities that make plastic useful are also the ones that make it hazardous: designed to fool nature itself, most plastics are too resilient to biodegrade in a meaningful timeframe. Our current efforts to recycle plastics have been inefficient so far: only 9 percent of plastic is recycled globally, and much of it is either thrown away or cannot be processed for recycling. One third of all plastic waste ends up in soils or freshwater, endangering our food, our livestock and the health of the soil. Invisible to the eye, microplastics linger in the environment, the food chain, and our bodies. Soil is the foundation of our agricultural systems which support nearly all food-producing crops: about 95 percent of our food comes from soil. Fertile soil that produces our food is a finite resource, and plastic pollution can have long-lasting impact on soil health, biodiversity and productivity, all of which are essential to food security. To avoid the future where our food systems are choked by plastics, we must rethink the ways we produce, consume and dispose of them. “Our soils silently bear the weight of discarded plastics, impacting our daily lives. On this World Environment Day, let us redefine our relationships with plastic, from design to disposal” says UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw. The solution to plastic pollution is closer to the ground than we might think. Our commitment to beat plastic pollution combined with business incentives that address plastic dependency can result in a positive switch from the ‘throwaway economy’ to a ‘reuse’ society. Through our everyday choices as consumers, let us join efforts with governments and businesses, shifting toward sustainable plastic alternatives and reusable plastic products, to reduce damage to human health, the environment and the land.