Desertification, an issue integrally linked to the climate change agenda, was discussed Saturday when Executive Secretary of the United National Convention on Combating Desertification (UNCCD), Luc Gnacadja, met President Jagdeo at State House. The Executive Secretary was accompanied by Coordinating Regional Officer of the UNCCD in Latin America, Heitor Matallo, in the talks which addressed ways of tackling land degradation and mitigating the effect of drought through sustainable land management and land rehabilitation.
“When the climate is degraded, the land is affected so there is a clear nexus between the two, and we need under the mechanisms that are ongoing for the negotiations for the new post-Kyoto mechanism, that the land is given the attention it deserves,” Gnacadja said.

The interest and expertise of President Jagdeo on climate change issues, particularly avoided deforestation under the REDD +, is one which the Executive Secretary said the UNCCD has acknowledged.
This new initiative, REDD+, the acronym for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation + , caters for cutting deforestation rates, conservation of forest stocks, sustainable forestry management, and expansion of forest stock.
UNCCD is a Convention to combat desertification and mitigate the effects of drought through national action programmes that incorporate long-term strategies supported by international cooperation and partnership arrangements.
The Convention was adopted out of a recommendation of the Conference’s Agenda 21 in Paris in June 1994 and entered into force in December 1996. It is the first and only internationally legally binding framework set up to address the problem of desertification.
In an invited comment to the Government Information Agency (GINA), Gnacadja said that sustainable land management is a challenge for all nations, but more particularly the world’s poor. (GINA)