This week, a Knowledge Symposium will take place in Rabat, Morocco, organized by the WOCAT Consortium Partner ICARDA and other institutions like CIHEAM-Bari, Procasur, Virginia Tech, IAV Hassan II, supported by the Project’s Partner Institutions and sponsored by IFAD. In the Symposium, WOCAT will discuss with countries the establishment a SLM Community of Practice. For more information contact the WOCAT Secretariat wocat@cde.unibe.ch

Join the InteractiveSession on ‘Sustainable Rangeland Management in a Changing Environment: AnIntroduction to Good Practices’ and the AsaseFestSession ‘Pastoralism: participatory rangeland mapping’. These sessions will share and discuss practices and key information coming out of the new TerrAfrica/WOCAT 'Sustainable rangeland management in Sub-Saharan Africa - Guidelines to good practice' publication. 

Join WOCAT at the UNCCD COP14 from 2-13 September, New Delhi, India in one of the 7 side events, the presentation "A global overview on sand and dust storms" or the additional "Carbon Benefits Project (CBP)/WOCAT Training: Estimating theimpact of Land Management Projects on climate change mitigation"

This new publication will be launched at UNCCD COP14 in India, September 2019 (side event: ‘LDN -restoring balance in our natural and working landscapes’, 4th September from 13:00 to 15:00hrs).

The WOCAT Symposium and WOCAT Network Meeting 2019 that was hosted by the Ministry of Agriculture of Ethiopia and jointly co-organized with CIAT Ethiopia, WLRC and WOCAT, was a success thanks to all participants, contributors and co-organizers. At the WOCAT Symposium participants shared their knowledge and discussed about up- and out-scaling SLM and achieving LDN. The following day participants visited the Jema watershed north of Addis Ababa to experience successful SLM implementation. At the WOCAT Network Meeting invited WOCAT experts jointly reflected on the achievements and experiences in applying WOCAT in different countries, institutions and projects, and on how the future of WOCAT should look like. More information will be shared soon here on the WOCAT website.

On 29-30 October 2019, the Global Landscapes Forum was convened in Accra, Ghana, with a focus on restoring the degraded ecosystems on the world’s largest continent. More than 500 participants joined. The session ‘Sustainable RangelandManagement in a Changing Environment: An Introduction to Good Practices’ and the AsaseFest Session ‘Pastoralism: participatory rangeland mapping’ put the often forgotten rangelands and pastoralism in the spot light of the GLF/Restoration map with great success.

The inception workshop of the GEF-funded Project ‘Tools for Land Degradation Neutrality’ together with Conservation International - Global Environment Facility (CI-GEF), Conservation International - Moore Center for Science (CI-MSC), University of Bern/WOCAT, University of Colorado (Land PKS), and University of California - Santa Barbara, took place on 30-31 October 2019, at the Arizona State University Washington Center. The project will support countries in monitoring and reporting of the SDG15 on LDN.

A training on 'monitoring and assessment of ecosystem services' with the WOCAT Director Hanspeter Liniger was held within the framework of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) project 'Scaling up Climate Resilient Agriculture (SUCRA)' in Cambodia.

The training on the use of WOCAT tools on 7-10 October 2019 was attended by about 23 participants from various institutions, including experts in land, agriculture, forests, rangelands and soils. The purpose of the training was to equip participants with the knowledge of evaluation and documentation of  land management practices, identifying good practices for wider scale implementation of SLM practices, making information and data available to planners and decision makers, and enhance the exchange of experiences and lessons among land users, researches and policy makers.

More than 60 delegates from five Central Asian countries gathered in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on 27 September 2019 to discuss land degradation, climate change impacts and mitigation issues of the region. The event was a joint collaboration of the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the dry Areas (ICARDA) and the Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Program for Aral Sea Basin (CAMP4ASB), led by the Regional Environmental Centre for Central Asia (CAREC). WOCAT presented its engagement in evidence-based decision support for SLM and emphasized what it can offer to the ‘Central Asia Climate Information Platform’ (CACIP).