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China has emerged as a champion in the fight against desertification by investing heavily in land restoration efforts through several major initiatives. The Three-North Shelterbelt programme, also known as the "Green Great Wall of China," is a national tree-planting project designed to rehabilitate degraded land and stop the desert encroaching into the fertile grasslands and farmlands of northern China. To scale up measures against desertification, the Chinese government has also developed a National Action Programme to Combat Desertification by expanding protected areas and restoring overgrazed and marginal farmlands to their natural state. It has created strong incentives to encourage private-sector organisations to invest in restoring degraded areas through public–private partnerships.  In 2016, China launched the Belt and Road Joint Action Initiative to combat desertification across the Silk Road region, and the cooperation between partner countries and communities is expected to accelerate in the future. China is making major strides towards combating desertification, but with a growing population and a warmer and drier climate, the challenges will also increase. We must ask what we can learn from China’s experience, and seek to balance the needs of socio-economic development with the protection of vital and limited natural resources. Read more: Full article on Climate 2020 site Land and climate change Land for Life programme  

Seoul, Republic of Korea – The 2018 REDD+ International Symposium, organized by the Republic of Korea Forest Service (KFS), took place on 31 October 2018, bringing together participants from UN agencies and international organizations, national institutions, universities and government agencies. The symposium focused on current status and major issues of REDD+, including Norway’s support of REDD implementation in developing countries, REDD projects in Cambodia in cooperation with the Republic of Korea, result-based payment and benefit-sharing mechanisms implemented in Brazil, the future work of the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility and the joint crediting mechanism developed by Japan to facilitate diffusion of leading low carbon technologies while contributing to the sustainable development in partner countries. Discussions also included the use of agroforestry for conservation and sustainable development, and cooperation between the Republic of Korea and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) on the implementation of REDD in DPRK.  Read more: Land and climate change Climate change and desertification  

Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran – Around 100 representatives of UN organizations, Iranian national institutions and government agencies from the countries of Asia and the Pacific gathered on 5-6 November 2018 for an expert consultation meeting on regional cooperation to build disaster resilience. The meeting included workshops on information management and decision support systems for disaster risk reduction and opportunities for regional cooperation in managing cross-border disasters in Asia and the Pacific. The discussions highlighted shared vulnerabilities of the region to both slow onset and extreme events and presented global, regional and sub-regional initiatives for sharing disaster loss data, including multi-hazard risk information and alert platforms.  The participants agreed on the need to identify further opportunities for action, including cooperation mechanisms for building resilience to sand and dust storms and developing partnership networks for information management on cross-border disaster. Read more: Sand and dust storms Addressing sand and dust storms in SDG implementation

Konya and Mersin, Türkiye – The 16th International training on combating desertification took place on 22-27 October 2018, bringing together international experts from the country parties of the Pan African Agency for the Great Green Wall (PAGGW) and Arab Organization for Agricultural Development (AOAD), as well as the representatives of various institutions across Türkiye.  The course, organized by the Republic of Türkiye General Directorate of Combating Desertification and Erosion, covered technical aspects of combating desertification and land degradation, such as the production of seed and seedlings, forestation and erosion control. The need to increase the level of regional collaboration in sharing technical experience among countries has also been highlighted. The training session took the participants to the research institutions, private sector project sites, and model practice fields, where the institute officials provided detailed information on activities carried out in the region. These included water retention and irrigation methods, livestock farming, soil and water resource management, as well as income-generating projects in afforestation and production of medicinal and aromatic plants. The training is one of the actions under the Ankara Initiative, a bilateral agreement between Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and UNCCD, launched at the UNCCD COP12 to strengthen the implementation of UNCCD in 2016–2019. The Initiative supports the global sustainable development agenda and leverages lessons learned from Türkiye’s experience in sustainable land management. Read more: Sustainable land management Land and SDGs The Great Green Wall

Kyoto, Japan –  The new Land Degradation Neutrality Initiative (GEO LDN Initiative), launched during the Group on Earth Observations Week 2018, will bring together Earth observation data providers and governments to develop quality standards, analytical tools and capacity building needed to strengthen land degradation monitoring and reporting, using remote sensing and data collected on site. At the touch of a button, governments will have the necessary data to prioritize interventions and monitor outcomes to manage land better. The GEO LDN Initiative responds to a call made by the UNCCD’s Conference of the Parties (COP13) to bring data providers and data users together and support global efforts to avoid, reduce and reverse land degradation globally.  Welcoming the Initiative, UNCCD Executive Secretary Ms. Monique Barbut said: “Land degradation is an existential crisis. Until now, monitoring it in real time felt like an insurmountable challenge. No longer. With Earth observation datasets and the practical tools to use them readily available, decision-makers and land users will have immediate and actionable information to scale up sustainable land management and planning. It is a first step to boosting our resilience.” Following the announcement, Germany pledged an initial contribution of EUR100,000 (USD113,000) for the GEO LDN Initiative. Read more: Full press release Achieving land degradation neutrality  

"The Group of Earth Observations launches a new, innovative initiative to put Earth Observation (EO) data in the hands of national and local decision makers in order to halt and reverse land degradation, and Germany immediately pledges EUR100,000 (USD$113,000) for the initiative." Kyoto, Japan. Over 75% of the world’s land surface is significantly impacted by human activity. The consequences are evident in more and severe droughts, high loss of wildlife and new trends in internal displacement and forced migration. Inaction on land degradation for most of the 169 countries affected by land degradation is due to the lack of accurate data and the tools to monitor it. In a landmark decision, the Group of Earth Observations (GEO)  today launched a new, innovative initiative that will put Earth Observation (EO) data in the hands of national and local decision makers, addressing this need. The GEO LDN Initiative unveiled in Kyoto will bring together Earth Observation data providers and governments to develop the quality standards, analytical tools and capacity building needed to strengthen land degradation monitoring and reporting, using remote sensing and data collected on site. At the touch of a button, governments will have the right data to prioritize interventions and monitor outcomes in order to plan and manage land better. Following the announcement, Germany pledged an initial contribution of EUR100,000 (USD113,000) for the initiative. To date, 119 governments have pledged to take the measures needed to avoid, halt and reverse land degradation to ensure the amount of productive land stabilizes by 2030 and beyond. “The world is gripped by a growing sense of crisis regarding the sustainability of the global environment, and the deteriorating global environment affects our daily life. Within this context, we are being tasked with taking action, as ‘global citizens’, against the various global issues that cannot be solved by one country alone,” said Keiko Nagaoka, Japan’s State Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, when he opened the GEO 2018 Congress. GEO, an intergovernmental organization whose mandate is to improve the availability and sharing of data on Earth observations to benefit all life on Earth, is made up of government, academic and research institutions, data providers, businesses, engineers, scientists and experts who share data to create innovative solutions to pressing global problems. “Land degradation is an existential crisis. Until now, monitoring it in real time felt like an insurmountable challenge. No longer. With Earth observation datasets and the practical tools to use them readily available, decision-makers and land users will have immediate and actionable information to scale up sustainable land management and planning. It is a first step to boosting our resilience,” said Monique Barbut, Executive Secretary, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. The Initiative responds to a call made from the UNCCD’s Conference of the Parties last September to bring data providers and data users together to support global efforts to avoid, reduce and reverse land degradation globally. Welcoming the Initiative, Jennifer Morris, President of Conservation International said, “it is time to move from measurement and monitoring to action. From Conservation International’s experience in the field we know restoring nature is an important piece of building healthy lands that can support productive and sustainable landscapes. Earth observation, and tools like Trends.Earth, can support local and national governments in prioritizing and implementing restoration actions.” To ensure the initiative gets off to a flying start, three Working Groups emerged from the discussions in Kyoto. One will focus on building national capacities; the second will develop data quality standards and protocols for the SDG indicator land degradation (15.3.1) and its sub-indicators; and, the third will establish platforms with high computing capacities so partners can collaborate on big data analytics, such as open data cubes. According to Barron Joseph Orr, Lead Scientist, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, “if the ability to process, interpret and validate geospatial data can be enhanced, it would lead to real national ownership. UNCCD Parties are clear about their data needs so delivering for governments and local communities will drive the work programme of the new GEO LDN Initiative.” The partnership and cutting edge technology developed for the GEO LDN initiative will move efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals target on land degradation into the fast lane. The target of achieving land degradation neutrality is widely accepted to be an accelerator and integrator for achieving the other 17 Goals. ------- Notes to Editors Media Contact: wwischnewski@unccd.int For inquiries about the GEO LDN Initiative, contact: salexander@unccd.int For information about the GEO LDN Initiative, click here: http://www.earthobservations.org/activity.php?id=149 For information about the German contribution, click here: https://www.earthobservations.org/article.php?id=326