World Soil Day is commemorated every 5 December to remind us that soil is important for both the natural system and human well-being. Our laxity in taking care of the soil partly comes from the assumption that land is abundant. It is also because most of us are no longer directly reliant on the land…

On the occasion of the Virtual meeting of the COP 14 Bureau Mr. President, Dear Bureau members, Thank you for joining this virtual meeting. I sincerely appreciate your engagement with the UNCCD, particularly during these extraordinary times as the world faces the COVID–19 pandemic. As COP bureau…

En français Dear friends, 2021 must be the year to reconcile humanity with nature. Until now, we have been destroying our planet. We have been abusing it as if we had a spare one. Our current resource use requires almost two planets but we only have one. If we compare Earth’s history to a calendar…

Bonn, Germany, 19 April 2013 – A major conference of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), convened onto assess progress in the implementation of the Convention’s 10-Year Strategy and to find ways to enable affected countries to better address desertification and drought…

Bonn, Germany, 16 February 2011 – “The international community’s battle against desertification and the effects of drought is on the threshold of a paradigm shift,” Mr. Luc Gnacadja, Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has said, ahead of a global conference on…

Message by the UNCCD Executive Secretary Mr. Ibrahim Thiaw This year World Wildlife Day celebrates the theme ‘Forests and Livelihoods: Sustaining People and Planet’. Currently, up to 350 million people live within or close by forests, including some of our most ecologically diverse ecosystems…

Bonn, 20 July 2020 – An international technology competition to design software that can support well-informed land use decisions is launched today by the Group on Earth Observation Land Degradation Neutrality (GEO-LDN) Initiative. As reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, up to…

The Water Security and Climate Change conference (WSCC) is an annual event where scientists, policy makers and stakeholders from various sectors discuss the diverse facets of water security and its relation to climate variability and change. The WSCC strives to go beyond science and build bridges…

The Parliamentarian Round Tables aim to increase parliamentary awareness of issues of land degradation and desertification, and to boost the effectiveness of land and soil policies. As the success of the UNCCD's objectives significantly depends on the creation of appropriate national land policies…

In 2021, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will convene a Food Systems Summit as part of the Decade of Action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (“SDGs”) by 2030 with the intention of inducing collaborative efforts to Build Back Better , and transform the way society produces, consumes…

UNCCD Executive Secretary interview with The National Horizons Daily on 9 June 2020 Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD Executive Secretary, shares his views on the impacts which COVID19 pandemic could have on the African continent in general, Mauritania and the rest of the Sahel countries in particular as an…