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Madrid (Spain), 30 June 2023 --- The Spanish Government will make globally available a pioneering system to monitor meteorological droughts in real-time, helping other countries build up their early warning systems and adopt a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to drought management. The announcement is part of Spain’s contribution to the International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA), a coalition of more than 30 countries and 20 international entities driving drought resilience in the face of climate change. Teresa Ribera Rodriguez, Vice-President of the Government of Spain and Minister for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, made the announcement in Madrid during the third meeting of the Intergovernmental Working Group (IWG) on Drought of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). “I applaud Spain's leadership and its drive to share technological innovations and valuable expertise with other regions that, like the Mediterranean, are particularly vulnerable to drought,” said UNCCD Deputy Executive Secretary Andrea Meza Murillo. “IDRA recognizes that countries and communities need to tap into their collective experience and knowledge to move towards a more resilient future. Spain’s move is a step in that direction.” Real-time drought visualizations The system developed by Spanish scientists monitors real-time rainfall and evapotranspiration —the combined loss of water from the soil surface and plants— through satellite data and a series of automated weather stations. The resulting visualizations are freely available online and inform the management of water resources, especially, in key industries such as agriculture. Users can also visualize meteorological drought indexes in Spain since 1961 and download datasets for specific places and times. The tool was launched in 2021 as part of Spain’s National Adaptation Plan to Climate Change, and has since been incorporated into Google Earth Engine, a public platform for the analysis and visualization of geospatial datasets. The contribution of Spain is in line with IDRA’s commitment to the ‘Early Warning for All’ initiative against extreme weather and climate change, launched by the United Nations Secretary-General and overseen by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The WMO is one of the founding members of IDRA, which was launched in 2022 at the initiative of Senegal and Spain. As part of a drive to promote knowledge-sharing, IDRA members are working to facilitate partnerships between technology providers and vulnerable regions to make drought-management innovations available to all. Members have also agreed on establishing communities of practice to foster knowledge exchange and collaboration. Policy options for drought resilience From 21 to 23 June 2023, Madrid hosted the third meeting of the Intergovernmental Working Group on Drought (IWG), which previously convened in Yerevan, Armenia and Bonn, Germany. The Group is working to identify policy instruments that help countries prepare themselves for, and manage, worsening droughts. In 2024, it will present its findings and recommendations to the 16th UNCCD Conference of Parties. No country is immune to drought and its impacts. In Europe alone, economic losses related to drought reach around 6,200 million  euros annually, and the global impacts of this phenomenon are projected to become longer and more severe due to climate change and unsustainable land management. Drought affects agriculture, but also energy, transportation, and tourism, and it directly affects the health of an estimated 55 million people around the world each year.  

We are offering a free booklet for children with pictures and brief explanations about the importance of caring for our lands.

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.  

Tobacco growing not only harms human health, but the health of our land as well, undermining the future of our food. While today a record 349 million people are facing acute food insecurity, tobacco is grown in over 124 countries, taking up 3.2 million hectares of fertile land that could be used to grow food. The World No Tobacco Day on 31 May under the slogan “Grow food, not tobacco” encourages governments to end tobacco-growing subsidies and use the savings to support farmers who make a switch to more sustainable crops that improve food security and nutrition.    While we are aware of the health impact of tobacco, which kills more than 8 million people annually around the globe, we tend to think less about the destructive effect of tobacco cultivation for the environment. To meet the demand for land needed for tobacco cultivation, 200,000 hectares of forests are destroyed each year. For every 15 boxes of cigarettes sold, a tree is chopped down.  Tobacco causes other forms of land degradation, such as soil erosion, because it is usually planted as a monocrop, leaving topsoil poorly protected from wind and water, reducing soil fertility and disrupting water cycles. Tobacco crops also require large amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides that pollute the soil and pose a serious hazard for farmers and their families.  Recognizing that there is no sustainable future in tobacco, farmers in Kenya and Zambia are making a shift to growing high-yield and nutritious food crops such as high-iron beans with the support of the Tobacco-Free Farms Initiative launched by World Health Organization (WHO), the World Food Programme, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the United Nations Capital Development Fund and the UNCCD, supported by the Secretariat of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and in collaboration with the national ministries of health and agriculture.  Creating a supportive crop production and marketing ecosystem means mapping value chain options for nutrient-dense alternative food crops and supporting sourcing of inputs, training in good agricultural practices, enabling access to microfinance opportunities and credit, and improving post-harvest processing systems. Tobacco-Free Farms Initiative has been active in Migori County, Kenya for the last four growing seasons, successfully supporting over 1,400 farmers switching from tobacco to food crops and is currently being scaled to three new tobacco growing counties in Kenya (Meru, Busia, Bungoma) and one tobacco growing province in Zambia (Eastern Province).  By the end of 2024, the project expects:  At least 4000 farmers in Kenya (across four counties) and 1000 farmers in Zambia (across one province) will have converted from tobacco growing to alternative crops   At least 25 per cent increase in acres of land attributed to alternative crops in target counties/provinces  At least 200 per cent increase in annual income of 80 per cent of farmers who switch from tobacco growing to alternative crops  One of the key outcomes of the project is increased return-on-investment for farmers who shift from tobacco to alternative crops. Farmers supported by the initiative to grow high-iron beans are earning at least three times as much as they were growing tobacco in one season. What is good for the farmers is also good for the land. The Tobacco-Free Farms Initiative supports the 2030 agenda on poverty reduction, human health, reduced inequality and economic growth while tackling climate change and combating environmental degradation to secure land resources that feed the growing world population. 

While children are the least responsible for the environmental degradation, they are likely to inherit a tremendous burden of land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate crisis unless we take the urgent action to address these challenges. Children across the world – whether in Bhutan or Barbados, India or Namibia – have beautiful dreams of what the world should be, now and in the future. The UNCCD Capacity Development and Innovations Office is launching a project "Painting a beautiful World: A children's art story," inviting children to visualize how they feel (and why) about the land they inhabit. We invite children to harness their imagination and artistic gifts to draw pictures of nature, animals, their families, and the surrounding landscapes, highlighting the vital role of healthy land. We hope that the children’s art will carry the messages of environmental awareness while showcasing the uniqueness of cultures, regional landscapes and languages. Through art, the children can express their dreams of the world they want and portray solutions to help achieve a better life on Earth. The deadline for submissions is 19 June 2023. Campaign objectives The main goal of the project is to raise children's awareness on the importance of protecting the land and the environment, so that they can: Appreciate the great significance of land in their daily lives Become future stewards of healthy land Connect with other children in the common quest to protect the land Gain greater awareness of the importance of sustainable development to ensure a secure future for the children of the world We also hope to facilitate an active dialogue between children and adults on environmental stewardship and the need to create a secure future together.   Rules Format for submissions: A hand-drawn illustration in crayon, paint, pencil, pen or any other color medium The maximum size of the finished artwork should be A4 Participation is FREE and open to an individual child or group of children of the same school Individual participants may submit up to two pieces of artwork, groups are allowed to submit one piece Participants must be between 6 years and 12 years of age by the submission deadline  The artwork must be the original work of the participant(s), not published previously The submission of each participant or group of participants must be approved by a parent, teacher or a guardian All drawings must be submitted through this link, in a gif, jpg, jpeg or png format scanned from the original artwork created by hand The participants grant the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), its partners and other UN agencies, as well as other persons or entities authorized by the Secretariat, a free-of-charge, non-exclusive, irrevocable, transferable, perpetual, worldwide right to use the copyright, related rights or any other intellectual property rights in accordance with existing law or that may arise by law concerning the submitted drawings The UNCCD is entitled to publish the drawings while carrying no obligation to do so If an entry is considered for an award, the intended awardee will be asked to submit proof of age All entries and the participants' details (name, age, school or town) may be used in publicity campaigns by UNCCD Participation in this exercise means full acceptance of all rules stated above. Selection process All submissions will be evaluated by the UNCCD Capacity Development and Innovations Office, which will grant awards of 50 euros each for the submissions considered the six best.  Special awards of 100 euros with be given to the school submissions considered the three best. All participants will receive certificates of recognition.  

While land covers less than 30 per cent of the earth’s surface, it is home to 85 per cent of all species. It comprises a variety of terrestrial ecosystems that provide a broad range of essential goods and services, vital to sustaining all life. Biodiversity above and below ground supports the ecological processes that underpin the healthy and beneficial functions of land.   Land use change has been identified as the greatest threat to nature, projected to have the largest global impact on biodiversity by the year 2100.  Leveraging synergies between international commitments to stem biodiversity loss and land degradation is therefore key to address these interconnected crises.  On this year's International Biodiversity Day, the new brief “Land Restoration to Safeguard Nature and Livelihoods: UNCCD and CBD Working Together” spotlights the shared agenda of restoration and resilience, central to both UNCCD and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework for 2030. It identifies where and how synergies can enhance implementation at global and national levels, increasing the impact of limited finance and delivering multiple benefits.  UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw said: “We must harness the power of synergy, a power where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Synergies, like the harmony of a finely tuned orchestra, exist where commitments intersect under binding multilateral agreements and voluntary commitments. Here, at the nexus of land governance, management and restoration, we find a melody that can restore balance.”  The brief stresses that preventing degradation of ecosystems and rehabilitating degraded land are cost-effective responses that can simultaneously safeguard biodiversity and improve rural livelihoods, while reducing the growing environmental risks to our societies, economies, and the natural world.  Recently adopted Global Biodiversity Framework together with Sustainable Development Goals and Land Degradation Neutrality commitments present a roadmap for a harmonious future when we channel these pledges into national plans and align our actions for resilience and sustainability.