23 February 2015
Drylands Monitoring Week Establishes Network for Sustainable Management of Drylands
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Participants at the Drylands Monitoring Week, which was hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), saw the launch of a global assessment of land management in grassland and pastoral systems to enhance the sustainable management and restoration of drylands and developed the 'Rome Promise on Monitoring and Assessment of Drylands for Sustainable Management and Restoration.'

FAOFebruary 2015: Participants at the Drylands Monitoring Week, which was hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), saw the launch of a global assessment of land management in grassland and pastoral systems to enhance the sustainable management and restoration of drylands and developed the ‘Rome Promise on Monitoring and Assessment of Drylands for Sustainable Management and Restoration.’

The Week opened with a three-day workshop that discussed current technical tools and knowledge gaps in the area of drylands monitoring, and explored opportunities to fill capacity gaps through new technologies and policy commitments. The workshop concluded with a plan of action for initiating a collaborative process to promote large-scale and comprehensive monitoring of drylands, including through the improved integration of scientific data and traditional knowledge. Thereafter, an inception workshop took place for a participatory assessment of land degradation and sustainable land management in grassland and pastoral systems.

At the conclusion of the workshops, participants adopted the ‘Rome Promise on Monitoring and Assessment of Drylands for Sustainable Management and Restoration,’ in which they agreed to establish the ‘Rome Promise Collaborative Network’ to, among other tasks: advance monitoring and assessment of drylands; communicate the value and importance of drylands monitoring to relevant stakeholders; and develop a dynamic roadmap for collaborative action.

The Rome Promise responds to the recommendation of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN (FAO) Council 2014 to develop a global assessment of the extent and status of drylands’ forests, rangelands and agrosilvopastoral systems, as well as a number of existing international agreements and initiatives calling for the restoration of degraded lands.

Drylands Monitoring Week was organized by FAO along with the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), with funding support from the EU-ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The Week took place at FAO Headquarters in Rome, Italy, from 19-23 January 2015. [Workshop Outcomes] [Drylands Monitoring Week Agenda]

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