This year's Desertification and Drought Day  runs under the slogan “Food. Feed. Fibre.” and seeks to educate individuals on how to reduce their personal impact. Watch the WOCAT video at around 11:25 CEST during the UNCCD global observance event on UNCCD twitter, facebook or youtube!

Postponed to 29 September - 1 October 2020.

WOCAT will be involved in several sessions around the topics of SLM on- and offsite impacts, carbon benefits, co-creation of knowledge and equity and fairness in climate change adaptation. Details will follow soon.

In this new series, WOCAT partners share insights on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting land use, agriculture, and small farmers in their region. The short reports reveal the distinct ways that authorities and people on the ground in different settings are responding to a common threat.

From June 15-19, 2020 an online training on QGIS and the WOCAT watershed tool for 70 participants from Central Asian countries took place. This is part of a series of trainings in the framework of the GEF/FAO CACILM II project organized by WOCAT and partners to support countries in mapping land degradation and SLM.

In the week of 25 May 2020 almost 100 participants from Central Asia countries are participating in an online training course on the Carbon Benefits Project (CBP) Tools within the framework of the Central Asian Countries Initiative for Land Management (CACILM II) project. The training will allow participants to calculate carbon stocks and greenhouse gas emmissions associated with land management projects and report on the impacts of activities on climate change mitigation.

A new Photobook by the Arid Land Research Center, Tottori University, seeks to inform about the nature of salt accumulation in soils of drylands and the challenges faced in achieving sustainable land management with agricultural potential from salt affected soils.

Within the farmework of the IFAD grant Scaling up SLM with smallholder farmers the WOCAT partner Uganda Landcare Network (ULN) carried out a workshop with the Uganda Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (UFAAS) and stakeholders from the public and private sector, academia, landcare groups, farmer organizations and others to mainstream and align SLM in the UFAAS and the African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS) modalities of operations.

WOCAT renewed its partnership with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) to jointly boost the uptake of SLM around the world through strengthened global partnership. The agreement was signed by the Deputy Executive Secretary of UNCCD, Mr. Pradeep Monga, and WOCAT Director, Mr. Hanspeter Liniger, on behalf of the WOCAT Consortium.