2024 UN Desertification Conference (COP16)

Land is fundamental for addressing multiple global challenges, including combating degradation and drought, halting biodiversity loss, as well as mitigating and adapting to climate change. Despite special reports by the IPCC and IPBES on the connection between land, climate and biodiversity, there is still a lack of recognition that halting land degradation is crucial to maintain a space for solutions to these interlinked challenges. Large-scale initiatives still address these challenges in silos, thereby exacerbating other challenges. This High Level Interactive Dialogue “Healing our land through science and Earth Intelligence” aims to elaborate a way forward to scale up science and data on healing our land, linking land stewardship and restoration with climate and biodiversity goals, and aspirations for improved human well-being.

It does so by involving stakeholders from diverse fields, including science and academia, data providers and users of Earth Observation, governments, civil society organizations and non-governmental organizations, as well as the United Nations. It consists of a session on science gaps, a session on data gaps and a concluding session on launching an Action Agenda to scale up science and Earth Intelligence to address the global environmental crises. The overall session will be chaired by H.E. Munir Al-Desouki (President of King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology - KACST), the session on science gaps will be moderated by Zita Sebesvari (Director of United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security – UNU-EHS and Vice-Rector in Europe), and the session on data gaps will be moderated by Yana Gevorgyan (Director of Secretariat, Group on Earth Observations – GEO).

Objectives of the High Level Interactive Dialogue

• Highlighting the need for new and additional science on land, considering the crucial role that land has for human well-being, and identify ways forward to scale up science for sustainable land management by addressing goals of climate change mitigation and adaptation as well as biodiversity conservation simultaneously.
• Identifying data gaps, as well as new and emerging datasets for SDG 15.3.1 reporting, Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) planning and implementation, and their potential to support goals of all three Rio Conventions including for challenging environments such as small island developing states (SIDS) and hyper-arid areas.
• Identifying enablers and barriers, based on good practice examples to improve policy, institutional and funding mechanisms, to scale up science and Earth Intelligence to reverse the current upward trend in land degradation.
• Launch an Action Agenda to initiate progress.

Speakers

Science agenda to connect land stewardship and restoration with climate, biodiversity and aspirations for improved human well-being

• H.E. Munir Al-Desouki, President, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST)
• Zita Sebesvari, Deputy Director, United Nations University - Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS)
• Nichole Nannette Barger, Co-Chair, UNCCD Science-Policy Interface & Professor, University of Colorado
• Michael Obersteiner, Director, Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University
• Becky Chaplin-Kramer, Global Biodiversity Lead Scientist, World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF)
• Mariaelena Huambachano, Indigenous scholar

Earth Intelligence for Sustainable Land Use: Harmonizing National and Global Actions through Data

• Yana Gevorgyan, Director, GEO Secretariat / Moderator
• H.E. Thoriq Ibrahim, Minister of Climate Change, Environment and Energy, Maldives
• H.E. Mohammed bin Yahya Al Sayel, President, General Authority for Survey and Geospatial Information (GEOSA), Saudi Arabia
• Maurille Elégbédé, National Focal Point, United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Benin.
• Niel Sims, Research Manager, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)