On 7 September 2021, the first Tools4LDN workshop took place with more than 45 experts representing various national and international institutions, as well as decision makers from the public sector. The participants discussed the importance of data validation and the possibilities to integrate national information and expert knowledge in Colombia´s assessment of land degradation.

A series of upcoming training sessions on different Tools for LDN are planned to include Trends.Earth, LandPKS and the WOCAT SLM data base..

Join us for the session Restoration of Grassland Ecosystems: Actions on theground as we explore the importance of grasslands and its role in achieving global sustainability. 

The 2021 Desertification and Drought Day  held on 17 June will focus on turning degraded land into healthy land.

Land restoration can contribute greatly to post-COVID19 economic recovery. Investing in land restoration creates jobs and generates economic benefits, and could provide livelihoods at a time when hundreds of millions of jobs are being lost.  Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD Executive Secretary

Sustainable Land and Water Management (SLWM) practices are often advocated by authors to mitigate Sand and Dust Storms (SDS) impacts, however, in many cases these are just mentioned, without indicating specific practices and without presenting examples. The authors of this paper thus reviewed the WOCAT database to identify concrete examples of SDS-relevant SLWM practices.

Sustainable land management (SLM) needs to be inclusive and improve opportunities for vulnerable groups including women and youth. On 14-15 September 2021, WOCAT and UNCCD conducted a review workshop to fine-tune the jointly-developed questionnaire on gender-responsiveness of SLM Technologies and Approaches.

The International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP) 2026 is endorsed by the FAO Conference. WOCAT recognises how rangelands and pastoralists contribute to SLM and expressed its interest in sending a Letter of Support for IYRP proposal to the Government of Mongolia. 

After a long journey LUP4LDN tool from SCiO, ICARDA, WOCAT, Università degli Studi di Sassari and ELD wins the GEO-LDN Competition and  will receive financial and technical support to transform their prototype into an operational and scalable tool.