June 17 - World Day To Combat Desertification

The seminar hosted by Sr Environmental Specialists Mohamed Imam Bakarr and Ulrich Apel in honor of this internationally recognized day introduced a revised results-based management framework for the GEF land degradation focal area strategy.

The strategy was created with a goal to “contribute to arresting and reversing current global trends in land degradation, specifically desertification and deforestation” in mind. It is meant to sustain productivity of agro-ecosystems and forest landscapes in support of livelihoods.

Noting this objective, Bakarr and Apel mentioned that they expect that GEF financing will catalyze an improved enabling environment within the agricultural sector, more developed agricultural administration, the continued flow of services in agro-ecosystems, and increased investments in sustainable land management to result from the framework.

In the future, the revised results-based management structure will serve as a basis for the land degradation portfolio monitoring and assessment tool. Bakarr and Apel identified the four primary purposes of this tracking tool:

1. Portfolio level monitoring in the land degradation focal area
2. Demonstration of the GEF’s catalytic role
3. An account of the global environmental benefits in production systems-agricultural, rangelands, and forest landscapes
4. A report on GEF financing for implementation of the UNCCD by parties

The tool is structured in order to obtain valuable data during project design and implementation.

While the seminar today resulted in a successful exchange of ideas, it is just one event in a chain of many further discussions in which partners in the GEF can work together to address global environmental issues and the various ways that these concerns can be approached.