The growing loss of land
ELD Kick-off Workshop at ICRAF, Nairobi.
Land degradation, desertification, and drought are widespread global issues that increasingly threaten the future of our environment. They result in the loss of ecosystem services from land and land-based ecosystems that are necessary for human livelihoods. Food production, water availability, energy security, and other services provided by intact ecosystems are jeopardised by the ongoing loss of land and soil productivity.
The depletion of ecosystem services also negatively impacts the productive capacity of economies. On a global scale, the annual economic losses due to deforestation and land degradation were estimated at up to 3.4 trillion EUR in 2008, equal to 7.5 % of the global GDP. Read more from the project “Assessing opportunities for sustainable land management in Africa: A cost-benefit approach in eight countries”
The Inception Workshop for the European Commission Project on Scaling Up Evergreen Agriculture (EVA) was held during 26-29 September 2017 at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Nairobi, Kenya. ICRAF and their NGO partners (World Vision, CRS, Oxfam, CARE) as well as the European Commission came together to have an internal launch and start with first project planning activities.
The ELD Secretariat as well as key ELD partners joined the event to exchange on common goals and strategies for the project´s eight target countries. The participation allowed for a lively exchange with stakeholders from the different countries and for defining important next steps of the ELD Implementation Phase.
ELD thanks ICRAF for hosting an excellent workshop and looks forward to collaborating with new and old partners in the course of the upcoming project activities to support national Land Degradation Neutrality (SDG 15.3) processes.
Last Week (19-22 January 2018), members of the ELD Initiative came together for a three-day workshop at the ELD Secretariat in Bonn, Germany, to discuss the activities for the upcoming months.
The main aim of the workshop was to develop a capacity building training for eight African countries and to discuss the next steps, all within the scope of the new Evergreening Africa project. Thereby, each ELD member will play an important role to ensure a successful implementation. Furthermore, the workshop gave participants lots of opportunities to brainstorm about future ELD activities and discuss general updates.
Originally published by UN Convention to Combat Desertification, see the original post.