The fourth lecture in the INTERFACES colloquium series on “Sustainable land management in sub‐Saharan Africa: Improving livelihoods through local research” is on 30 November 2023 by Juliane Wiesenhütter and Nina Bisom from GIZ.
Juliane Wiesenhütter and Nina Bisom, both from the GIZ Sector programme soil conservation and sustainable land management, gave a presentation entitled “United for Land – Partners, networks and contributions from a German perspective”. Speaking to a small but very interested audience they gave well appreciated insights into international policy processes related to land management with a particular focus on Germany’s involvement. The presentation started with the introduction of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), one of the three “Rio Conventions”. UNCCD is thus also interacting with the better known UNFCCC (Climate Change) and CBD (Biodiversity) and has been ratified as politically binding by almost all countries of the world.
In the second part of the presentation, some of the tools UNCCD uses to inform its policy processes were presented. The most prominent of these is the data platform WOCAT which promises also a useful tool for the regional projects under the BMBF FONA initiative to publicise innovations. The Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) and the GEO Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) Initiatives are two further data providers to UNCCD, to which interested institutions and individuals can also subscribe. The discussion focussed on WOCAT as the most immediately useful tool for the members of the audience and on the much needed interaction between actors of the three Rio Conventions to use their synergies to foster sustainable use of land resources.