UNCCD COP 15 - Land Restoration Day

Hosts: UNCCD

 [ Recorded webcast ]

Healthy and productive land resources – soil, water, and biodiversity – are the foundation of societies and economies. Roughly USD 44 trillion of economic output (more than half of global GDP) is moderately or highly reliant on natural capital.  However, in recent decades, land resources have been subject to persistent degradation and loss due to global patterns of human domination.  

Most countries and communities now recognize the urgent need to transform land governance and restore land-based natural capital to create meaningful jobs, reduce emissions, and restore harmony with nature. Whether in managed or natural ecosystems, these activities can only be sustained by targeted government policies and budget outlays, considerable shifts in consumer demand and corporate investment, and more inclusive and responsible governance – all of which must come together to support regenerative land and water management practices on the ground.

Programme

09:00-10:30
Land Restoration for People and Planet: UNDP Ecosystem Restoration Initiative

10:45-12:15
Local Actions for Sustainable Land Management: an overview of GEF Small Grants Programme Portfolio Sustainable Land Management

12:30-14:00
Towards coherence of land-based Rio-targets: Linking Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN)  targets with Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) through  Sustainable Land Management (SLM)

14:15-15:45
Cost and benefit data on Sustainable Land Management – launch of a new GIZ/ELD-UNCCD-WOCAT tool

16:00-17:30
PBL’s assessment of the global potential for land restoration – cost/benefit analysis and scenarios for the Global Land Outlook

17:45-19:15
Land Degration neutrality (LDN) reporting, target setting and monitoring: Experiences from Ecuador, Turkey, and Kazakhstan in co-developing and applying FAO-WOCAT tools at national level for LDN

09:00-10:30
Land Restoration for People and Planet: UNDP Ecosystem Restoration Initiative
Speakers: Elie Kodsi (UNDP) - Bitondo Dieudonné (Cameroon) - Guadalupe Kabia (Malawi) - Nurdaulet Samen (video from Kazakhstan)

This side event is organized by UNDP in partnership with the governments of Malawi, Cameroon and Kazakhstan to showcase UNDP-supported efforts on land restoration and introduce the Ecosystem Restoration Promise. The specific objectives of the side event are to:

• Present country-led initiatives on land restoration highlighting results achieved, lessons leant, challenges experienced and opportunities to scale-up implementation.
• Seek feedback, partnerships and collaboration for the development and implementation of the Ecosystem Restoration Promise;
• Facilitate networking between country parties, restoration stakeholders and development partners to strengthen the emerging global movement advocated for by the UN Decade.

The event will be structured around the following interventions:

1) UNDP Support on Sustainable Land Management and Restoration (Ecosystem Restoration Promise);
2) The Malawi Green Corps Initiative;
3) Overview of National Efforts on Land Restoration in Cameroon; and
4) Addressing Land Degradation and Water Scarcity in the Aral Sea Region in Kazakhstan.

10:45-12:15
Local Actions for Sustainable Land Management: an overview of GEF Small Grants Programme Portfolio Sustainable Land Management

Welcome: Marie-Laure Mpeck Nyemeck (Small Grants Programme)
Opening remarks: Carol-Flore Smereczniak (UNDP Côte D’Ivoire)
Speakers: Yoko Watanabe (Small Grants Programme) - Doumbia Youssouf (UFEM - Côte D’Ivoire) - Rémi Hémeryck (SOS SAHEL) - Check Sidi Mohamed Traoré (Ministry of Environment, Burkina Faso)
Concluding remarks: Ulrich Apel (GEF)

The GEF SGP portfolio on Sustainable Land Management (SLM) has demonstrated good practices of adaptive, community-based land management that combine indigenous and local knowledge with modern techniques to address the degradation and destruction of agricultural lands, rangelands, and forest landscapes while also improving civil society capacity to implement integrated natural resources management approaches. The side event aims to highlighting the importance of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities action for SLM and to achieve Land Degradation neutrality (LDN) targets at the national and global levels. It will showcase the SGP SLM portfolio involving women and youth solutions that lead to job creation and livelihood improvement and contributed to the SDGs in alignment with GEF and UNDP strategies.

12:30-14:00
Towards coherence of land-based Rio-targets: Linking Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN)  targets with Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) through  Sustainable Land Management (SLM)

Enhancing soil health and soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks through climate-sensitive sustainable land management and land restoration is a central leverage for climate change mitigation and adaptation, food security and biodiversity conservation. Integration of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) targets into Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) may unlock resources to achieve LDN targets, raise the ambition of NDCs in the land use sector and ensure the inclusion of soil health in the post-2020 biodiversity agenda. The panel discussion will focus on how to strengthen apparent synergies between the Rio Conventions at a political level and aims to contribute to the alignment of national SOC-related planning processes to save resources and boost action.

14:15-15:45
Cost and benefit data on Sustainable Land Management (SLM) - launch of a new GIZ/ELD-UNCCD-WOCAT tool

Developing accurate measures of costs and benefits of SLM is useful for instance for: i) enhancing the appraisal of investments associated to the adoption of SLM, including the evaluation of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) Transformative Projects and Programmes; ii) assessing the costs and benefits associated to alternative pathways to achieve LDN by identifying the most cost-effective courses of action. With the purpose of contributing to the current efforts of developing information on the costs and benefits of SLM, a partnership between GIZ/ELD, UNCCD GM, WOCAT and ZEF/University of Bonn was established. The side event will launch a new database developed by the partners on costs and benefits of SLM based on the WOCAT dataset. The database will be presented to the audience, key results on costs and benefits - resulting from analyzing the WOCAT dataset - will be shared and discussed and main policy messages presented.

16:00-17:30
PBL’s assessment of the global potential for land restoration – cost/benefit analysis and scenarios for the Global Land Outlook

Although global scenario studies involve large uncertainties, our scenario analysis provides an integrated approach to assess global potential for land restoration which allows a consistent assessment of both synergies and trade-offs of land restoration. The scenario assessments are compared to current restoration commitments made by countries that have been analyzed across multiple national plans from the UNCCD, CBD and UNFCCC conventions and the Bonn Challenge. Additional studies by PBL (The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency) zoom onto these complexities for understanding cost and benefits of land restoration options at a lower scale. The costs of a common set of land restoration measures are estimated at the micro-level, and together with country-level commitments on land restoration provide a global estimate on the investments needed for large-scale land restoration. In addition, the evidence on impacts of land restoration at household-level are scrutinized, revealing a paucity of rigorous evaluations of the impact of land restoration across different settings.

17:45-19:15

Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) reporting, target setting and monitoring: Experiences from Ecuador, Turkey, and Kazakhstan in co-developing and applying FAO-WOCAT tools at national level for LDN

[PDF - 191 Kb]

Countries are facing challenges to report and monitor progress towards Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) at national level using their best available information. To tackle this issue, Ecuador and different countries in Latin America, Central Asia and Europe co-developed with FAO and WOCAT a tool to perform comprehensive, data-driven, and participatory assessments of land degradation at national scale, integrating qualitative and quantitative data and considering both the biophysical and socio economic dimensions of land degradation

• Opening Remarks: Pablo Caza, Climate Change Adaptation Specialist (Ministry of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition, Ecuador)

Part 1: Experiences co-developing FAO-WOCAT cloud based LDN Decision Support Systems

• Co-development of  FAO-WOCAT LDN Decision Support Systems with national experts
  Speaker: Ingrid Teich (WOCAT/Centre of Development and Environment, University of Bern)

• An interactive system to map land degradation and inform decision-making to achieve LDN via convergence of evidence across scales in Ecuador
  Speaker: Pablo Caza (Ministry of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition, Ecuador)

• Turkey´s LDN DSS: integration of national indicators and monitoring systems to achieve the Land Degradation Neutrality in Turkey
  Speaker: Suna Morkoc, General Directorate of Combating Desertification and Erosion

• Monitoring Land Degradation Neutrality in Kazakhstan
  Speaker: Zhanyl Bosayeva and Murat Temirzhanov, Chair of the Committee for Land Resources Management (Ministry of Agriculture, Kazakhstan / UNCCD Focal Point)

Part 2: Towards a community of practice on LDN

• Assessing land degradation and sustainable land management in Bangladesh: Challenges and way forward
  Speaker: Lutfor Rahman, Deputy Secretary (Ministry of Environment Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), Bangladesh)

• Towards Achieving Land Degradation Neutrality, a case of Botswana Land Restoration Projects
  Speaker: Lesika Basalumi (Department of Forestry and Range Resources, Botswana)

• Launching of the Drylands Sustainable Landscapes IP Community of Practice on LDN
  Speaker: Nicole Harari (WOCAT/Centre of Development and Environment, University of Bern, Switzerland)

• Closing Remarks: Ms. Vera Boerger (FAO)

Selected photos

All photos by: IISD/ENB | Matthew TenBruggencate
Source: https://enb.iisd.org/rio-conventions-pavilion-unccd-cop15/17-may-2022