23 September 2014: A high-level event, titled ‘Sustainable Land Management for Adaptation, Resilience and Food Security,’ which was co-organized by Germany, Iceland, Morocco, Qatar and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) Secretariat, convened on the eve of the UN Climate Summit in New York.

Monique Barbut, UNCCD Executive Secretary, said the event could help clarify how climate change adaptation, resilience and food security are linked and illuminate the importance of land-based adaptation.

The event emphasized that, as global demand for food and water increases and population grows, the most appropriate measures to combat and adapt to climate change will be linked to land management. Thus, a land management paradigm shift that provides low technology, low cost and flexible adaptation strategies could: help sequester three billion tons of carbon per year (up to 30% of fossil fuel emissions); help avoid conflicts over land and water resources in climate change and desertification hot-spots; and reintroduce up to two billion hectares of land to productive use, which would increase rural employment and economic development.

A growing convergence emerged from the event regarding the fact that addressing land degradation, desertification and drought through sustainable land management could provide the basis of a technologically easy and low cost climate change strategy. In addition, achieving land degradation neutrality could reduce climate-induced pressure on natural resources. Thus, participants stressed that land based adaptation and mitigation should form an integral part of any future climate change regime. [UNCCD Press Release]