A special celebration for the WDCD took place at FAO HQ on Friday 17 June. The theme of the day was “protect earth, restore land, engage people”, captured the importance of inclusive cooperation for protecting land and water resources and restoring and rehabilitating degraded lands.

The event called for urgent action to achieve a land degradation-neutral world and highlighted ongoing and planned collaborative efforts by FAO and partners to halt the progress of desertification by addressing its root causes pro-actively within the context of sustainable development Agenda, notably Target 15.3 which states “By 2030, combat desertification, restore degraded land and soil, including land affected by desertification, drought and floods, and strive to achieve a land degradation-neutral world.”

The celebratory event outlined views from national and international dimensions as well as FAO’s key areas of work for achieving SDG target on land degradation neutrality. Invited speakers included the Ambassador of the Republic of Cape Verde, the Managing Director of the UNCCD Global Mechanism, the Executive Secretary of the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity and FAO’s Deputy Director-General Natural Resources Coordinator.

Over the recent past, global initiatives have created awareness and put in place solid support for dryland management, notably the “Global Drylands: A UN System Rapid Response Report”; the “Bonn Challenge”, both of which were launched as part of the Rio+20 process. More recently, in the framework of the monitoring and assessment of drylands FAO and partners launched in 2015 the Rome Promise collaborative network to advance monitoring and assessment of drylands for sustainable management and restoration. Building on these initiatives, organizations led by UNCCD and FAO, have recognized the interlinkages between global challenges, such as food insecurity and malnutrition, water scarcity, land and soil degradation, desertification, climate change, biodiversity loss, and poverty and conflict; therefore a comprehensive and integrated approach in addressing them is essential. The report on sustainable land management (SLM) targeting decision makers in Africa: “Informing Future Engagement for Scaling up Sustainable Land Management in Sub-Saharan Africa – Lessons Learned for Decision Makers” was launched at the event. This is a synthesis of practical approaches on decision making for SLM policy development, based on experiences of the TerrAfrica Strategic Investment Programme (SIP). Several technical reports on drylands and desertification, on fisheries, rangelands, drought management were showcased and an update on progress made in the implementation of the Rome promise were presented during the event

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View a selection of photos from the celebration >>