Land Degradation Neutrality target setting process taking off in Africa

28 May 2016
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Representatives of more than 30 African countries met in Konya, Türkiye, from 28-30 May to discuss the game plan to launch the land degradation neutrality (LDN) target setting process in Africa.

Facilitated by the Global Mechanism and the Secretariat of the UNCCD, hosted by the Turkish Government as President of the Bureau of the UNCCD Conference of Parties, and supported by a multitude of bilateral and multilateral partners, the workshop enabled African countries to understand the key building blocks to defining national voluntary LDN targets and identifying transformative LDN projects and programmes.

“LDN is becoming a vehicle to bring together development agendas – from food security to climate action - that so far, have been separate”, said Mr Markus Repnik, Managing Director of the Global Mechanism, in his opening speech.

Reminding participants that “climate finance is rapidly becoming a major source of finance for LDN”, Mr Repnik underlined his expectation that the LDN target setting process will support countries to tap into such innovative sources of finance, taking into account the climate finance objective of USD 100 billion per year by 2020.

The UNCCD's GM's LDN Target Setting Programme supports countries to define LDN baselines, targets and associated measures to achieve LDN by 2030 as called upon by the Sustainable Development Goals. It furthermore helps countries to create leverage at country level by making the country specific LDN business case, implanting LDN in selected high profile national policies and commitments, ensuring stakeholder engagement at the highest possible level as well as identifying opportunities for the development of transformative LDN projects and programmes.

The workshop is part of a global initiative of the UNCCD Secretariat and Global Mechanism supporting more than 90 countries in achieving LDN. The next regional workshop on LDN target setting will take place from 5 to 6 June 2016 in Batumi, Georgia, for the Central and eastern European and Central Asian countries.

More than 60 participants met in Konya, Türkiye to discuss a game plan to launch the LDN target setting process in Africa.