Land rights have been recognised as critical towards achieving the goal of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) in an effective and equitable way, as confirmed by decisions recently adopted by the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD): decision 26/COP14 on land tenure in 2019 acknowledges the importance of tenure security to enhance the implementation of the convention; decision 27/COP15 in 2022 explicitly recognises the need for promoting equal tenure rights and access to land, for everyone but particularly for those in vulnerable situations such as Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, women, youth, small-scale farmers and pastoralists. Subsequently, UNCCD and FAO produced a technical guide for the integration of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) into the implementation of the convention and LDN.
Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have therefore the opportunity to engage national implementation processes and frameworks, such as National Action Programmes (NAPs) and Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN), to advocate for appropriate recognition of land rights as an instrument to alleviate and counter the Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought (DLDD) crisis.
This session brought together stakeholder representatives, policy experts and CSOs to learn from technical experts and share experiences about how national policy spaces generated by the implementation of UNCCD and LDN can be seized to advance tenure security and land rights.