30 years of UNCCD

30 years of UNCCD

Sub: Environment

Sec: Int conventions

United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD):

• UNCCD is a Convention to combat desertification and mitigate the effects of drought through national action programs that incorporate long-term strategies supported by international cooperation and partnership arrangements.
• The Convention, the only convention stemming from a direct recommendation of the Rio Conference’s Agenda 21, was adopted in Paris, France, on 17 June 1994 and entered into force in December 1996.
• It is the only internationally legally binding framework set up to address the problem of desertification.
• The Convention is based on the principles of participation, partnership and decentralization—the backbone of good governance and sustainable development.
• It has 197 parties, making it near universal in reach.
• The Holy See (Vatican City) is the only state that is not a party to the convention that is eligible to accede to it.
• To help publicise the Convention, 2006 was declared “International Year of Deserts and Desertification” but debates have ensued regarding how effective the International Year was in practice.

Secretariat:

• It has been located in Bonn, Germany, since January 1999, and moved from its first Bonn address in Haus Carstanjen to the new UN Campus (NewYork, USA) in July 2006.

Agenda 21:

• Agenda 21 is a non-binding action plan of the United Nations with regard to sustainable development.
• It is a product of the Earth Summit (UN Conference on Environment and Development) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. 
• It is an action agenda for the UN, other multilateral organizations, and individual governments around the world that can be executed at local, national, and global levels.
• One major objective of the Agenda 21 initiative is that every local government should draw its own local Agenda 21.
• Its aim initially was to achieve global sustainable development by 2000, with the “21” in Agenda 21 referring to the original target of the 21st century.

Flagship initiatives of UNCCD:

Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN):

• UNCCD defines LDN as “a state whereby the amount and quality of land resources necessary to support ecosystem functions and services to enhance food security remain stable, or increase, within specified temporal and spatial scales and ecosystems.”​
• The impacts of land degradation will be felt by most of the world’s population. ​Land degradation also changes and disrupts rainfall patterns, exacerbates extreme weather like droughts or floods, and drives further climate change.​ It results in social and political instability, which drives poverty, conflict, and migration. ​
• Achieving LDN requires three concurrent actions: ​
  • firstly, avoiding new degradation of land by maintaining existing healthy land; ​
  • secondly, reducing existing degradation by adopting sustainable land management practices that can slow degradation while increasing biodiversity, soil health, and food production; and ​
  • thirdly, ramping up efforts to restore and return degraded lands to a natural or more productive state.​

The UNCCD’s objectives for LDN include:​

• maintaining or improving the sustainable delivery of ecosystem services​
• maintaining or improving land productivity to enhance global food security​
• Increasing the resilience of land and the populations dependent on it​
• seeking synergies with other social, economic, and environmental objectives​
• reinforcing and promoting responsible and inclusive land governance​

India’s Efforts to Check Land Degradation:

• India is focusing on sustainable land and resource management for livelihood generation at the community level to make the local lands healthier and more productive for providing a better homeland and a better future for its inhabitants.
• The National Action Programme for combating desertification was prepared in 2001 to take appropriate action in addressing the problems of desertification.
• Following the global call for the submission of nominations for World Restoration Flagships, India endorsed six restoration flagships that target the restoration of 12.5 million hectares of degraded land.
• Some of the major programmes which address issues related to land degradation and desertification, being implemented currently are as follows:
  • Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP) (Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana)
  • National Afforestation Programme (NAP)
  • National Mission for Green India (GIM)
  • The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS),
  • Soil Conservation in the Catchment of River Valley Project
  • National Watershed Development Project for Rainfed Areas (NWDPRA)
  • Fodder and Feed Development Scheme-component of Grassland Development including Grass Reserves.
  • Command Area Development and Water Management (CADWM) programme,
  • Soil Health Card Scheme, etc.

Source: UNCCD