22 September 2010: The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Global Environment Outlook (GEO) Regional Consultation for Africa took place in Nairobi, Kenya, on 20-21 September 2010. This was the fifth in a series of seven regional consultations being undertaken by UNEP as part of the preparation for the production of the fifth GEO (GEO-5).
17 September 2010: During the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Summit at UN Headquarters in New York, US, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) will release a report titled “The Forgotten Billion: MDG Achievement in the Drylands.”
16 September 2010: The UN Environment Programme (UNEP), UN Development Programme (UNDP) and Global Environment Facility (GEF) launched a joint report synthesizing the results of the National Capacity Self-Assessment (NCSA) programme, launched in January 2000, to deepen knowledge on countries’ foundational capacities to meet global environmental objectives.
The Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel of the Global Environment Facility (GEF STAP) will meet to discuss strategies, toolkits and other information relevant for the November GEF Council meeting.
September 2010: The Global Mechanism of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is developing a web-based, knowledge exchange tool to strengthen the role of local stakeholders in decision-making processes related to Sustainable Land Management (SLM).
31 August 2010: Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and Luc Gnacadja, Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), recently discussed tightening their institutional collaboration with a view to enhancing responses to the effects of climate change.
23 August 2010: The Second International Conference on Climate, Sustainability and Development in Semi-arid Regions (ICID 2010), which convened in Fortaleza, Brazil, from 16-20 August 2010, brought together participants to discuss climate change and sustainable development in arid and semi-arid regions, and sought to raise the priority of these issues on the agenda of the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20).
16 August 2010: The Secretariat of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has released the July-August 2010 issue of UNCCD News, which focuses on the launch of the UN Decade for Deserts and the Fight Against Desertification (UNDDD). This special issue contains statements from 15 leaders, pledging their commitment and the backing of their organizations to the Decade.
16 August 2010: The UN has launched the Decade for Deserts and the Fight Against Desertification, which will run from 2010-2020 and will seek to raise awareness and action to improve the protection and management of the world’s drylands.
August 2010: The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has released a dataset of household surveys from the Limpopo Basin in South Africa from 2005.
