12 October 2015: To the 12th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 12) to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the Global Environment Facility (GEF) has presented its biannual report, ‘Investing in Land Stewardship.’

At COP 12, Chizuru Aoki, the GEF, explained that the ways in which land resources are being protected and managed, with a view to achieving land degradation neutrality (LDN) as embodied in target 15.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), will have impacts on multiple SDGs. She stressed the need for tackling the complex, interdependent issues of the land agenda in an integrated manner.

The biannual report provides information on GEF activities in sustainable land management (SLM) and funding windows as they relate to the GEF Land Degradation Focal Area (LDFA), specifically desertification and deforestation, for the period of July 2013 to June 2015. The reporting period coincides with the fourth full (or final) year of the Fifth GEF Replenishment Phase (GEF-5) and the first full year of the GEF-6, and includes additional information on policy and programming reforms related to GEF’s role as financial mechanism for the Convention. The total of 132 projects funded across all GEF windows during the reporting period amounted to US$844 million in grant support, leveraging an additional US$3.14 billion in co-financing.

The new LDFA strategy for GEF-6 includes four objectives: LD-1, Agriculture and Rangeland Systems -maintaining or improving flows of agro-ecosystem services to sustain food production and livelihoods; LD-2, Forest Landscapes – generating sustainable flows of forest ecosystem services, including sustaining livelihoods of forest dependent people; LD-3, Integrated Landscapes – reducing pressures on natural resources from competing land uses in the wider landscape; and LD-4, Maximizing Transformational Impact – maintaining land resources and agro-ecosystem services through mainstreaming at scale.

The report is structured in eight chapters: introduction; the GEF’s response to COP decisions; status of the GEF land degradation focal area portfolio, including programming trends, focal area objectives, multi-focal area programming and geographical trends; SLM as a crosscutting and synergistic element in other GEF funding windows; progress with GEF-5 programming; programming directions in GEF-6; portfolio monitoring and assessment; and a concluding chapter.

The GEF provides financing to eligible affected countries for activities that support UNCCD implementation. This amounts to US$431 million for 144 countries from 2014-2018 or the Sixth GEF Replenishment Phase (GEF-6). The GEF investment focuses on SLM in production systems, namely agriculture, rangelands, and forest landscapes, as well as on other SLM-related funding windows such as the Sustainable Forest Management program and three adaptation funds also managed by the GEF.

UNCCD COP 12 is taking place the 12-23 October 2015 in Ankara, Turkey. [Publication: Investing in Land Stewardship: Report of the GEF to UNCCD COP 12] [GEF Website] [IISD RS Coverage of UNCCD COP 12]