Living Land

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Seizing opportunities for sustainable land

management through targeted policies

and strategies — German engagement

Christina Seeberg-Elverfeldt, German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)

hen addressing environmental challenges,

three conventions at the global and inter-

national level must be considered: the

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate

Change addressing climate change, the Convention on

Biological Diversity addressing biodiversity, and the

United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification

(UNCCD) addressing sustainable land management.

These too often work in separate ways; however there

is also a need to look at cross-cutting themes. When

it comes to the national level, an array of policies and

initiatives exist which need to consider overlaps, syner-

gies and trade-offs between the challenges. Especially

at the local level when implementing programmes and

projects, local realities usually need an integrative

approach, considering several challenges.

Therefore, with Germany’s commitment towards imple-

menting UNCCD, we contribute to overcoming a silo

approach and seize opportunities to promote sustain-

able land management at different levels, in synergy with

different multilateral agreements. Germany’s support to

the implementation of UNCCD has been very pronounced

from the early days of the convention. During the bien-

nium 2012/2013, the Federal Government invested €425

million into combating desertification, which went to over

800 projects worldwide. Most of these projects operate at

national and local level, many within regional frameworks

and some at international level. Generally, sustainable

land management is an integral part of German develop-

ment cooperation (DC) projects and programmes in the

fields of food security and rural development, watershed

management and biodiversity conservation, preservation

The initiative ‘One World — No Hunger’ aims to overcome hunger today and

secure the conditions for future generations to feed themselves

Reforestation of degraded land for sustainable wood energy production is

among the measures enabled by German DC

Image: Klaus Ackermann

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