The support plan for the Sahel is a regional approach to collectively address the root causes of disruptions such as poverty, migration and youth unemployment, climate change, insecurity, governance and institutional issues in the region. In this report an overview of the current situation for each of the priority areas of the UN Support Plan is presented to demonstrate that the full implementation of the plan could utilize an existing momentum of development not seen in decades in the Sahel.

Land is a key economic resource inextricably linked to access to, use of and control over other economic and productive resources. Recognition of this, and the increasing stress on land from the world’s growing population and changing climate, has driven demand for strengthening tenure security for all. This has created the need for a core set of land indicators that have national application and global comparability, which culminated in the inclusion of indicators 1.4.2 and 5.a.1 in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its Climate Change and Land: An IPCC Special Report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems in 2019 (www.ipcc.ch/srccl). We refer to the IPCC’s report in short here as the Special Report on Climate Change and Land. The Special Report was a response to proposals from governments and observer organisations to the IPCC.

Kenya Land Alliance (KLA) in partnership with Indigenous Livelihoods Enhancement Partners (ILEPA) and through the support of the Global Green Grants is implementing a project on Climate change, Livelihoods, and energy targeted at Women and Youth in Narok County.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE INTRODUCTION: 

The longest-running barometer of Afghan opinion, the Survey of the Afghan People is a map of social change over time, presenting a clear picture of the gains and gaps that Afghans perceive in a rapidly transforming nation.

Gender equality is a key to eliminating poverty and hunger, as it has been demonstrated by the FAO throughout its research worldwide. As part of the FAO efforts on generating evidence and knowledge, and in compliance with the FAO Policy on Gender Equality, the purpose of the Country Gender Assessment for Uzbekistan is to contribute to the production of knowledge for better informed, targeted and gender sensitive actions in agriculture and rural development.

Land Degradation Neutrality is a new way of approaching land degradation that acknowledges that land and land-based ecosystems are affected by global environmental change as well as by local land use practices. Achieving the target of a land degradation neutral world encourages adaptive management during planning, implementation, and monitoring of LDN-related activities and follows the LDN response hierarchy of avoiding, reducing, and reversing land degradation.

Women constitute the bulk of people who rely on land in many of the regions most affected by desertification, land degradation and drought. One in three people on earth depend directly on agriculture, while nearly 80% of employed women in least developed countries report agriculture as their primary livelihood. Food availability fluctuations also impact women’s role in food production and intra-family food distribution, with women often reducing their nutritional intake and that of their children, with dire health consequences.

This UNCCD-SPI technical report provides well-established scientific evidence for understanding the strong linkages between land use and drought and how management of both is connected through water use. It introduces a new concept of Drought-smart land management (D-SLM) and organizes relevant approaches and practices in fourteen groups across four major classes of land use.

Land restoration has tremendous potential to help the world limit climate change and achieve its aims for sustainable development. In its latest study, the International Resource Panel finds positive spin-offs to support all 17 Sustainable Development Goals agreed to by the world’s nations as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. While other reports have focused on a subset of the SDGs, this report has intentionally considered all of them, and has done so by inviting a large number of diverse authors to participate in the process.

The UNCCD-SPI technical report “Realising the Carbon Benefits of Sustainable Land Management Practices: Guidelines for Estimation of Soil Organic Carbon in the Context of Land Degradation” provides decision guidance for the estimation of soil organic carbon (SOC) in support of appropriate deployment of sustainable land management (SLM) technologies, in order to maintain or increase carbon in the soil and contribute to the achievement of land degradation neutrality (LDN).