Namibia will be represented at the upcoming 17th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) to be held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, this month.
Ministry of Environment and Tourism deputy director for multilateral environmental agreements Peter Muteyauli told The Namibian on Sunday that Namibia will send a delegation to the conference which will be held from 17 to 28 August.
Muteyauli said the Namibian delegation will be headed by minister of environment and tourism Indileni Daniel.
Namibia is an active party to the UNCCD, one of the three global environmental agreements which were adopted at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.
The other two are the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Accelerated by climate change, desertification, land degradation and drought have been identified by the Namibian government as the major challenges facing the country’s national efforts to achieve sustainable land management.
The Bonn-based secretariat of the UNCCD says the conference will be held under the theme ‘Restoring Land, Restoring Hope’ and will bring together delegates from UNCCD’s 197 parties, alongside leaders from governments, business and civil societies as well as young people, indigenous people, pastoralists and small-holder farmers.
According to the UNCCD, delegates will gather to forge solutions to the interconnected challenges of desertification, land degradation and drought, recognising that land is essential in reducing instability, preventing displacements and strengthening human national security in vulnerable regions.
The UNCCD secretariat quoted its executive secretary, Yasmine Fouad, as saying “as drought intensifies and land degradation accelerates, the conference must drive practical investable solutions from restoring degraded land and soils to strengthening the land-water nexus so that communities can thrive”.
