10 July 2013: The Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Luc Gnacadja, and the Director General of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Julia Marton-Lefèvre, have signed a Joint Plan of Action, through which their respective organizations will seek to draw global attention to the value of drylands and their threatened status as ecosystems.

The signing ceremony took place on the sidelines of the Caux Dialogue on Land and Security, which convened in Caux, Switzerland, from 7-11 July 2013.

The Joint Action Plan will run until the end of 2014. Through it, drylands ecosystems will become part of an IUCN Red List of Ecosystems that is currently under development. This List will seek to provide a global standard against which the status of ecosystems can be assessed and the risk of collapse can be measured.

The Joint Action Plan also addresses: land rights and customary governance in the drylands; and the harmonization of gender mainstreaming policies with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). [IUCN News Release] [UNCCD News Release] [IUCN’s Red List of Ecosystems]