UNCCD 3rd Scientific Conference: Combating desertification, land degradation and drought for poverty reduction and sustainable development
The 3rd UNCCD scientific conference will be held during the 4th special session of the Committee on Science and Technology (CST S-4) of the UNCCD. The conference will address three major challenges:
- Diagnosis of constraints: How to best characterize and understand the vulnerability and adaptive capacities of ecosystems (in particular agro-ecosystems) and populations in affected regions, including regions newly susceptible to the consequences of climate change?
- Responses: How to build efficiently on available knowledge, success stories and lessons learnt to promote implementation of better adapted, knowledge-based practices and technologies?
- Monitoring and assessment: What are the new monitoring and assessment methods available to evaluate the effectiveness of these practices and technologies that provide improved insights on whether or how their implementation should be scaled up?
Programme:
Session 1: Diagnosis of constraints
How can key vulnerabilities of ecosystems and populations with regard to climate change in the various situations in the world be identified? How can they be characterized?
- Workshop 1.1: Climate change
- Workshop 1.2: Environmental and ecological set up
- Workshop 1.3: Food security, agriculture, pastoralism
- Workshop 1.4: Socio-economics Workshop 1.5: Integrated methodology and policy making
Session 2: Responses
How can adaptive capacities be developed or maximized at short, medium and long term? What are the major contributions from traditional and local practices and scientific research? How are they related to specific settings? How can they be generalized so that they can be adapted and applied to broader settings? What are the obstacles to more widespread use?
- Workshop 2.1: Crops, livestock, genetics and seed systems
- Workshop 2.2: Agro-ecosystems
- Workshop 2.3: Soil and water issues
- Workshop 2.4: Knowledge and knowledge transfer
- Workshop 2.5: Desertification, land degradation and restoration
Session 3: Monitoring and Assessment
How can we best measure the performance of actions to combat land degradation and desertification? How can we cost-effectively evaluate the efficiency of drought-mitigation strategies?
- Workshop 3.1: Indicators
- Workshop 3.2: Remote-sensing and mapping
- Workshop 3.3: Drought, water, hydrology
- Workshop 3.4: Sustainable land management / Land degradation neutrality
- Workshop 3.5: Processes of degradation