In the light of the negotiations taking place around the United Nation’s Convention to Combat Desertification’s (UNCCD) upcoming 14th Conference of the Parties, which will take place next September in India ; participants are willing to influence the decision making and put land questions back at the center of the debate. In order to do so, a statement, including the contributions and recommendations elaborated during the 3 days of work of Désertif’actions, has been validated at the closing session of the event.
Some extracts of the statement
« We are convinced that we, development actors, must raise awareness among forces present in the farming, pastoral, and oasis environments, as well as in many others, as we are all together citizens of the world : together, we are not defenders of the land fighting desertification, we ARE the land defending itself ! »
(…) Aware of the growing insecurity, we refuse to let it scare us and through our work and our presence, we want to show that we are determined to fight against the fatality of destiny »
(…) We are determined to properly address land property questions, a subject that has been, for the first time this year, officially brought to the UNCCD’s Conference of the Parties’s agenda. »
(…) In this agenda, we will contribute to the debates regarding the links between land, biodiversity and climate, as well as the discussions on the links between land and renewable energies, between rural and urban and between land and health.
