What is the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)?
On a global plane, the issue of desertification was first discussed at the UN Conference on Desertification held in Nairobi, Kenya in 1977. But due to a lack of support, both administrative and financial, attempts to efficiently tackle the problem of desertification were crippled. Therefore in 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) or so called Rio Earth Summit remmended the elaboration of a United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The Convention, the only convention stemming from a direct recommendation of the Conference’s Agenda 21, was adopted in Paris on 17 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. The Convention is based on the principles of participation, partnership and decentralization – the backbone of Good Governance. It now has more than 180 country Parties to the Convention, making it truly glob
