WOCAT

The twenty-first session of the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (#CRIC21) to the UNCCD will take place from 13 to 17 November in Samarkand, Uzbekistan! Together with our partners, WOCAT will contribute to various side events, showcasing our efforts in assisting countries in enhancing LDN monitoring and reporting, promoting South-South collaboration, and advancing integrated land use planning. The WOCAT Global Network will express its role in supporting data generation and knowledge sharing on LD & SLM best practices and capacity building, in collaboration with the UNCCD and other partners.

Join us for the webinar on “Using the Land Degradation Assessment in Drylands (LADA) and WOCAT for scaling up good land management practices in Asia” on 17-18 October from 1:30 to 3:30PM GMT+7 (Bangkok time). In addition to raising awareness on the use of the WOCAT Database for the reporting SLM good practices and other related WOCAT-FAO tools for mapping land degradation and SLM, the webinar aims to increase the contribution of countries and projects to the WOCAT Database to enhance knowledge sharing.

WOCAT, in partnership with the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists 2026 and the FAO Committee on Forestry Working Group on Dryland Forests and Agrosilvopastoral Systems (COFO WG), is holding a summer school session to explore transformative approaches to building climate resilient dryland systems. FAO/IYRP dryland summer school 12-15 Sept 2023 in Jordan. WOCAT SLM expert Rima Mekdaschi Studer will be conducting the field say.

Join WOCAT for the learning session from the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration taking place this 22 June 2023, 16:30 EAT / 13:30 GMT!

The WOCAT Global Database, LIFE GoProFor and Panorama Solutions are coming together on one platform called the Framework for Ecosystem Restoration Monitoring (FERM), developed by FAO and partners. FERM serves as a platform to monitor, collect, and disseminate good restoration practices from around the globe.

Discover more about these platforms and the importance of sharing good practices to foster knowledge exchange and enhance the skills of restoration practitioners.

The learning session content and direction are developed and curated by FAO led Task Force on Best Practice & Monitoring Task Force, GIZ, IUCN, LIFE GoProFor, Paronama Solutions and WOCAT.

On 16 June 2023 at 10:00 to 13:00 CET, looking forward to the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought (17th June), the UN event “Her Land. Her Rights: Advancing Gender Equality and Land Restoration Goals” has been organized in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations Headquarters (New York) and will be livecast from the UN Web TV.

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), UN Women, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) will bring together leaders and gender equality champions to discuss policies and actions needed to advance women’s land rights and promote stronger female leadership and decision-making power in sustainable land management.

18 University professors, sustainable agriculture and land restoration experts from around the world have met on 5-8 June at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences (TH Köln) in Germany to design a course that « is global in scope, but not cast in stone. It should be flexible to be spread around the word, initiating a collective push through towards the target of reaching one million trainees in 20 years » (Dr. Muralee Thummarukudy @G20 Global Land Initiative).

The course “Trigger change! Innovative agriculture solutions for land restoration” will start mid-2024 and will be focused on sustainable agriculture and innovation as vehicles for land restoration, contributing to a new generation of innovators.

The Water Harvesting Explorer (WHE) is a decision support tool developed with funding from the World Bank to explore the opportunities for small-scale rainwater harvesting and water storage in the landscapes of the Western Sahel. To find these potential intervention measures the tool is linked to the WOCAT global SLM database. On 8.5.2023 and in the framework of the ACReSAL (AGRO-CLIMATIC RESILIENCE IN SEMI-ARID LANDSCAPES) World Bank project in Nigeria, WOCAT held a webinar to introduce WOCAT, good practices documentation and how to populate the global SLM database with more and diverse RWH practices which serves as basis for informed decision making using the WHE tool.

On 31 May, FAO Brazil, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change of Brazil and WOCAT jointly organized a webinar in Portuguese. One goal of the webinar was to introduce the WOCAT Global SLM Database and highlight its availability in Portuguese. The other was to discuss jointly how to expand global access to the SLM good practices and actions carried out in Portuguese-speaking countries around the globe.

Climate change, biodiversity, desertification – what connects ? Do we have the knowledge and tools for effective Sustainable Land Management? How can we work together to restore land and boost resilience ?

These questions were explored during the joint panel discussion with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the CDE (WOCAT Consortium Partner) and with the exceptional presence of Mr. Ibrahim Thiaw, Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UNCCD.

FAO and UNCCD jointly organized a regional webinar on integrating land tenure into restoration initiatives from 15-17 May. These webinars aimed to raise awareness on the value of tenure security and its contribution to biodiversity conservation, sustainable land management, ecosystem restoration, and climate change mitigation and adaptation while improving food security and local livelihoods. The first day focused on Africa/Arab region, the second on Latin America/ Caribbean, and the third day on Central-East Europe/ Asia/ Pacific.

The 2nd seminar organised by GEO LDN took place on April 25. It was focusing on "National Approaches to Mapping Land Degradat. The speakers, including WOCAT SLM and LDN expert Ingrid Teich, shared their experiences on participatory processes to improve maps of land degradation and estimations of SDG indicator 15.3.

The seminar was recorded and can be watched here.

SEARCA and Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas jointly organized the Roundtable Discussion Series, which discussed the current state of digital economies in agriculture, the status of carbon farming in Southeast Asia, the challenges and opportunities in the field, and the role that technology and innovation can play in creating a more sustainable future. Isabelle Providoli and Eleanor Milne (both WOCAT associated researchers) represented WOCAT in panel 5 on “Education, capacity building and partnerships”.

The course will build the competencies needed to transform the way practitioners manage dryland forests, with a focus on increasing sustainability whilst retaining the benefits of other interventions. It targets programme and project managers, field practitioners, policy makers and anyone interested in sustainable development of drylands. The launch event will took place on Zoom on 29 March, and included high-level speakers, experts and partners who discussed some of the course’s topics in detail.

On February 28th WOCAT organized a workshop with GIZ for the seven ProSoil countries and its national partners. The workshop introduced participants to the WOCAT-FAO Mapping Questionnaire (QM), showed them examples of the application of the QM around the globe and participants discussed its utilization in the ProSoil project landscapes. Furthermore, the concept of convergence of evidence was presented, participants familiarized with the use of Google Earth Engine (GEE) in the context of land degradation, SLM and LDN, and the GEE decision support apps for LDN showcased.

World leaders launched 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, took 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.

According to the latest Drought in Numbers report compiled by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), droughts have increased in frequency by 29 percent since 2000, with some 55 million people affected every year. Recent droughts in Australia, Europe, western United States, Chile, the Horn and Southern Africa, show that no country is immune to drought. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that droughts will be more frequent, severe and last longer. Climate change bears much of the responsibility, but so does how we manage our land and water resources. The IPCC estimates that three out of every four people in the world will be living in drier, water-scare conditions by 2050.

In November the workshop series "Scenarios for Integrated Land Use Planning (S4ILUP)" 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.

14th November: Experts and Practitioners in Land use planning - Identifying needs of users of land and data involved in ILUP processes.

15th November: Technical provider side - Analyzing academia and data provider approaches and tools.

23rd November: Joint session for all workshop members, providing the opportunity to discuss outcomes and kick-start development of a cross-sectoral ILUP network.

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

As part of the the FAO driven 8th World Forest Week, global partners and participants will engage in the virtual knowledge exchange "Transforming Agrifood Systems with Forests" #COFO26 by the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF). The event is aimed at promoting best practices to enhance synergies through agroforestry and towards restoration of agrosilvopastoral lands, as well as the adoption of innovative approaches and technologies supporting integrated landscape planning and informed decision-making.
Ingrid Teich, WOCAT/CDE SLM Expert, will partake as speaker during the 29/9 15:50–17:00 CEST (UTC+2) session, themed "How to improve decision making using better data and the latest tools?".
Simultaneous interpretation will be available in EN, FR and ES.
Follow #COFO26 and the 8th World Forest Week also on Twitter and Facebook!

Rainwater Harvesting is considered a valuable water source, particularly in arid and semi-arid areas across the world. This webinars series organized by FAO/WEPS-NENA project & Water Scarcity Initiative aims to provide an overview of rainwater harvesting applications and illustrates, with country examples, the diversity of approaches.

On May 31, Rima Mekdaschi Studer (WOCAT SLM Expert) represented WOCAT in the 1st session of the series (M1/S1: Setting the Scene) and presented the WOCAT Water Harvesting Book.

The Sri Lanka Conservation Approaches and Technologies (SRICAT) is organizing a workshop with the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on "Documentation of sustainable land management approaches and technologies" to develop a platform among relevant government agencies, private organizations and individuals to share their SLM experience in Sri Lanka. Visit our channels for more information.

The event is organized by Crowd2Map Tanzania and is happening 29 November from 12-13h30 CET. WOCAT and FAO Geospatial specialists, Ingrid Teich and César Luis Garcia will demonstrate how they map land degradation and share UNCCD recommended methodology as well as methodologies for participatory mapping of degradation from our Land Degradation Assessment in Drylands project. Youth mappers and more - join us!

On November 18th, the Global Environment Facility Dryland Sustainable Landscapes Impact Program (DSL IP) was presented during the COFO Working Group on Dryland Forests and Agrosilvopastoral Systems. The DSL IP is implemented in 11 countries, globally coordinated by FAO in collaboration with two executing partners, IUCN and WOCAT. If you are interested to know more, please subscribe to the newsletter here.

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.

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.

As part of the official launch of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (UNDER) we presented our 'Restoring Life to the Land - the Role of SLM in Ecosystem Restoration' joint publication with the UNCCD. Panelists from the WOCAT network, namely ICIMOD, ICARDA, Uganda Landcare Network and NGO GREAD Niger, shared their experiences in SLM good practices implementation on the ground to support ecosystem restoration.

Join us for the Launchpad 'Disseminating knowledge and developing capacities for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030: A Task Force on Best Practices. This session will bintroduce the key products developed by the task force, including a set of guiding principles for Ecosystem Restoration, the key findings of a global capacity needs assessment, and the template of good practice, followed by a panel discussion on knowledge dissemination.

On 2-3 June 2021, GLF hosted the first-ever digital conference focused entirely on Africa’s drylands and how integrative restoration practices can see them flourish once again.

On 27-29 April 2021 the Climate-Soil Community of Practice (CoP) initiated by GIZ and the 4 per 1000 Initiative is organising a Workshop on Monitoring climate benefits of sustainable land management with a focus on Soil Organic Carbon. Join us in Session 1 on 27 April, 13:00-15:15 CEST, to learn more about linked tools to choose carbon friendly SLM practices, to estimate SOC impact of SLM activities and to collect compatible data on a mobile phone.

On April 1st 2021, the WOCAT Steering Committee with the participation of WOCAT's Consortium Partners ISRIC, ICARDA, FAO, ICIMOD, GIZ, CIAT-Bioversity and CDE endorsed the amended Framework Agreement and new organizational structure. With this, Hanspeter Liniger, long-term WOCAT Director, ends his assignment and hands over his responsibilities to the new WOCAT Executive Team comprised of CDE, ISRIC and ICARDA.

On International Forest Day, we share findings that relate land and forests and the interconnections between both. For this day, we have selected our Technologies and Approaches aiming to ensure sustainable land management whilst protecting forests within a particular environment. To learn more, visit our Twitter page and Facebook page and learn here from the Statement by the UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw: “This year’s International Day of Forests theme of ‘Forest restoration: a path to recovery and well-being’ emphasizes the role forests must play in building a better, heathier and more equitable world as we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

WOCAT and WOCAT Consortium Partner ICARDA, together with other international organizations, participated in the inception workshop for the sand and dust storms (SDS) toolbox at UNCCD headquarters in Bonn. The development of the toolbox was requested by UNCCD parties at COP 14.

WOCAT participated in the Agency Partners Meeting of the Dryland Sustainable Landscapes Impact Programme at FAO headquarters in Rome. The meeting provided an opportunity to inform the design of the Global Coordination Project which will, amongst others, create linkages to the LDN pathway, support opportunities for public and private investment, and manage knowledge at regional and global level.

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 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"

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.

The meeting was hosted by the General Directorate of the Combatting Desertification and Erosion of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Turkey. This third and final global meeting gave the opportunity to share and discuss experiences and results amongst the 15 participating countries.

The World Day to Combat Desertification (WDCD) is observed every year on 17 June to promote public awareness of international efforts to combat desertification. Many countries, groups and individuals celebrate and observe WDCD by organizing a variety of outreach activities and awareness raising events.

Join WOCAT at several events: 1st April side event on decision support for SLM with FAO and participation of DS-SLM project partners and the launch of the e-learning course on SLM with CIHEAM and FAO. 2nd April regional initiative to combat land degradation in the Mediterranean with FAO.

The four-day Forum is hosted by DS SLM Thailand and is organized jointly by FAO, Land Development Department (LDD), Soil and Fertilizer Society of Thailand (SFST) and the Kasetsart University. The Forum will be held during the Annual Kasetsart University Agricultural Fair to also allow participants to witness a range of agricultural SLM approaches and technologies implemented in Thailand.

FAO and the WOCAT will present the Decision Support Framework developed within the GEF/FAO project ‘decision support for mainstreaming and scaling out SLM (DS-SLM)’ which provides guidance to countries on scaling up SLM. Representatives from three to four project countries (tentatively Philippines, Colombia, Morocco, and Uzbekistan) and partners will showcase their experiences and processes established for mainstreaming and scaling out SLM in specific landscapes.

Today, the World Mountain Forum 2018 has opened. The Forum will be held from 23-26 October 2018 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, to advance the agenda on sustainable mountain development by building on past achievements and successes and sets to develop scenarios for a thriving mountain future. At the Forum, WOCAT and the Carbon Benefit Project will be presented by Farrukh Nazarmavlov today and tomorrow.

The side event by the Swiss NGO DRR Platform and partners will explore different components for the successful implementation of Nature-based Solutions for Water, based on case studies from the joint publication with WOCAT on good practices in Disaster Risk Reduction.

Every two-three years, ILC organises the Global Land Forum (GLF). This unique event brings together ILC members and other stakeholders from grassroots organisations, activists, local and international NGOs, and researchers, to multilateral organisations and government agencies from around the world to advance understanding of the complex and dynamic political, economic, environmental and social linkages between land governance, food security, poverty and democracy.

The UN focuses on “nature-based solutions” as the theme for the 2018 World Water Day and World Water Development Report. The aim of this week is to align the present 2018 Thematic Scope with this, and to go further to explore the wider water, ecosystems and human development agenda.

Training workshop on participatory co-management of natural resources organized within the framework of the FAO project on Participatory and integrated watershed management project for erosion control (GCP/MOR/050/SWI). CDE, University of Bern, and the School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences (HAFL) held the workshop with a strong focus on participatory rangeland management. The project has documented 11 SLM Technologies and 4 SLM Approaches.

The World Water Forum contributes to the dialogue of the decision-making process on water at the global level, seeking to achieve the rational and sustainable use of this resource. Given its political, technical and institutional scope, one of the Forum’s main features is the open, democratic participation of actors drawn from different sectors.

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1992 - 2016 (WNM)