World leaders will launch a new alliance to boost drought resilience on Monday, 7 November 2022, at the Sharm el-Sheikh Climate Change Conference in Egypt. The high-level launch event, jointly convened by Senegal and Spain, titled, International Drought Resilience Alliance, will take place from 17:00-18:00hrs local time.

World leaders recognize the urgent need to shift drought management approaches from the current emergency response to resilience. The Alliance is envisioned as a collaborative platform to rally political momentum and trigger actions that support countries, cities, and communities to enable this shift and significantly reduce their vulnerability, impact and exposure to extreme drought.

Are you a land use planner or practitioner versed in science and technology? 

Apply to November "Scenarios for Integrated Land Use Planning (S4ILUP)" workshop series, focused on horizontal integration between the different areas of ILUP as well as vertical integration to address common challenges and needs in evidence-based decision-making on land.

S4ILUP has formed by partners from UNCCD, FAO, the ELD Initiative, the GEO-LDN Initiative and WOCAT to identify challenges and best practices, facilitate the dialogue between data users and providers, support the development and accessibility of better tools for ILUP.

During the 2022 International civil society Summit «Desertif'actions» taking place from 5 to 8 October in Montpellier, WOCAT and UNCCD will hold a joint session on tools, knowledge, partnership and services to bring Sustainable Land Management and Agroecology to scale by context. The session will start at 18.00 local time and Dr. Rima Mekdaschi Studer, SLM expert of the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) at University of Bern, will present "WOCAT: Good Practices and an Open Network - Bringing SLM/Agroecology to Scale" and moderate the panel discussion.

The new publication "Gestion intégrée des bassins versants et gestion durable des terres dans la région de Midelt au Moyen Atlas, Maroc" is a case study analysis on integrated watershed management and sustainable land management in the Midelt region in the Middle Atlas, Morocco. The book was prepared jointly by the Centre for Environment and Development (CDE) and the School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences (HAFL).

In Bohicon, Benin, professionals from the main national institutions, ProSOIL/GIZ and a freelance consultancy on SLM participated in a WOCAT training from 22^nd to 24^th November. This was the fifth of seven trainings organised in seven ProSoil countries under the lead of WOCAT Consortium Partner CIAT-Bioversity. After Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Tunisia, India, and Benin, the last two are planned for Ethiopia and Kenya.

A WOCAT training on documenting SLM Technologies and Approaches was held in Aurangabad, India, from 14 to 16 November 2022. The training included a showcase of the related global WOCAT Database and its modules while prioritizing technologies or approaches to be documented for India. The trainees were drawn from different levels of stakeholder categories, including NGOs and research organizations working on SLM. 

WOCAT and FAO set up a survey to gather information from different actors working in the field of SLM and land restoration about their expertise and interest in South-South knowledge exchange. In particular, partners form Central Asia, Near East, North Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean are kindly invited to fill out the survey.