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World leaders
call for global action to restore degraded
land
New Delhi, 9 Sept
2019 – Prime Minister Narendra
Modi has called on the international community
to set up a global water action agenda as the
central theme to achieve land degradation
neutrality. He announced that India will restore
an additional 5 million hectares of degraded
land by 2030, raising the land to be restored in
India to 26 million hectares.
Modi
made the announcement when he opened the
ministerial segment of the 14th session of the
Conference of the Parties to the United Nations
Convention to Combat Desertification that opened
in New Delhi, India, a week
ago.
The restoration is part of
India’s commitment to achieve land degradation
neutrality, a flagship initiative under the
UNCCD. To date, 122 of the 170 countries
affected by land degradation have committed to
achieve land degradation
neutrality.
India’s Initiative
complements and strengthens two other previous
initiatives, namely, the Changwon Initiative of
the Republic of Korea and the Ankara Initiative
of Turkey, also launched at previous
COPs.
Prakash Javadekar, India’s
Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate
Change and the current COP14 President, also
announced that the Delhi Declaration will be
adopted from this special ministerial segment of
the Conference.
The segment is
meant to draw attention to the human face of
desertification, land degradation and drought,
he said, and ensured the stakeholders that
“India has the COP presidency for the next 2
years. We will work with all of you and I can
ensure that our positive actions will help us
give a better earth to the future
generations.”
Ralph Gonsalves, Prime
Minister of Saint-Vincent The Grenadines, said,
“The collective responses of nations globally
have not measured up adequately or sufficiently
to the enormous task at hand, so as to obviate
disaster. Accordingly, COP 14 convened under the
aegis of United Nations Convention to Combat
Desertification is a seminal staging post in
humanity’s quest for a better and sustainable
condition of our lives, living and
production.”
Amina Mohammed,
Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations
welcomed the Prime Ministers and other
dignitaries to the Conference, and said, “we no
longer have the luxury of spending the next 10
years meeting preparing the targets. We have two
weeks to move our common agenda in the right
direction to bend the curve on a planet of less
than 2 degrees, towards action and
impact.”
She highlighted that 800m
people are still going hungry and that crop
yields are dropping, and demand for food is set
to increase by 50 percent in the coming decades.
Restoring 150 million hectares of farmland could
feed 200 million more people every year. At the
same time, it would provide greater resilience
and over 30 billion a year in increased income
for small stakeholders and sink an additional 2
gigatones of carbon dioxide per year.
It is in these
critical times where our individual and
collective responsibilities will be needed, even
more than they ever have been. It is a
massive effort but together we can lift and
achieve the aspirations of the climate agenda,”
she added.
“The [Climate Action] Summit
“is not the first and last stop. It is the first
step towards concrete actions and we are asking
commitments from our member states. I will say
considerable engagement with financial sector is
really important, since there is a barrier, if
we don’t have resources. So, we are saying
public funds, must move. We are not correct in
saying the Green Climate Fund doesn’t have
money on the table, they do, and the states do
make contributions that is a good signal towards
the climate action summit in the next two weeks.
It is continuous engagement, that is what it is
about,” she added.
Ibrahim Thiaw,
UNCCD Executive Secretary, highlighted the
present and inter-generational impacts of land
degradation globally and underlined the plight
of the children being born “whose future is not
in the hands of the parents alone, but of
humanity at large.”
He drew
attention to recent scientific assessments that
revealed the harm caused by land degradation,
stressed importance of the current COP in laying
“the groundwork for change” for the five United
Nations Summits to be held in New York soon, and
said “combining our land with three little
concepts of equality, partnerships and scale
could take us a very long way towards our common
goals.”
Thiaw also concurred with
Mr. Mohammed regarding the role of the private
sector in ramping up land restoration
particularly for vulnerable, rural and
smallholder farmers, and clarified that the
engagement with the private sector is not the
same as privatizing land.
COP14
President Javadekar said that, “combating
desertification have to be a national
goal. In India, we are already on the way
of combating desertification, the green covering
is rising in India. From 24% in the last 5
years, it has increased by nearly 15,000 square
km and we are inching towards our
target of having 33% of green
cover.”
“If human actions have done
damage to the world and the environment, now
positive human actions will make a difference
and will give a better earth for future
generations,” he added.
Over 8,000
delegates, including ministers, heads of United
Nations and intergovernmental bodies, youth,
local governments, business leaders and
representatives of non-governmental
organizations are attending the Conference,
whose theme is “Investing in Restoration to
Unlock Opportunities.”
COP14, which
ends Friday, is expected to adopt over 30
decisions and a few country-led initiatives on
the actions governments will take to reverse
land degradation especially over the next two
years, and also
beyond.
Notes to
Editors:
India is a signatory to
the United Nations Convention for Combating
Desertification (UNCCD). The Ministry of
Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC)
is the nodal Ministry of Government of India
(GoI) that oversees implementation of the
Convention in the country.
India’s population
is projected to reach 1.7 billion by 2050. About
2 billion hectares of land – an area over three
times the size of India – are degraded, but can
be restored back to health. India was one of the
first countries to commit to the 2030
Sustainable Development Goal target of achieving
land degradation neutrality (LDN).
India is
the current President of COP14 and will serve
for 2 years. As with previous COP sessions, a
high-level segment is in progress to raise
political momentum for the negotiations and
boost the engagement of stakeholders in the
Convention’s
implementation.
About
UNCCD
The UNCCD is an international
agreement on good land stewardship. It helps
people, communities and countries to create
wealth, grow economies and secure enough food
and water and energy, by ensuring land users
have an enabling environment for sustainable
land management. Through partnerships, the
Convention’s 197 Parties set up robust systems
to manage drought promptly and effectively. Good
land stewardship based on a sound policy and
science helps integrate and accelerate the
achievement of the Sustainable Development
Goals, builds resilience to climate change and
prevents biodiversity
loss.
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