LADA Dryland Degradation Assessment Project

The LADA project will produce a GLADA.

LADA Dryland Degradation Assessment Project

The secretariat continued to follow closely the activities of the Land Degradation Assessment in the Drylands (LADA) and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), including participation in meetings of the Technical Advisory Group of LADA, and the Executive Committee and Board of the MA.

Committee on Science and Technology

Parties embarking in more detailed national land degradation assessments may wish to adopt the LADA methodological framework and to share their findings in order to refine the global LADA assessment.

Using more recent material, readily available, the GLASOD study has been improved by LADA.

The LADA approach

The LADA methodological framework comprises the LADA approach and a set of tools for the different scales of land degradation assessment, from the global to the subnational.

Item 10 of the provisional agenda

At the same time, Parties interested in refining the findings from the global LADA assessment in their own country are welcomed to request LADA assistance to develop project proposals and to identify potential funds.

The LADA project has integrated available worldwide knowledge and expertise and proposes a flexible and comprehensive framework of land degradation assessment methods.

The request for an assessment of the extent of land degradation in drylands came from the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), out of which the Land Degradation Assessment in Drylands (LADA) project was conceived.

The exit of poverty stricken counties needs to pass the preliminary verification, secondary verification and special inspection for assessment.

Based on this survey, the national LADA products will be defined during the full LADA project.

Development of the global land degradation assessment (GLADA)

A LADA brochure highlighting the background, objectives and expected results of the LADA project was discussed and distributed at various international meetings.

In response to decision 19 COP.6, the secretariat has continued to follow closely the activities of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) and Land Degradation Assessment in Drylands (LADA), including the provision of comments and inputs to documents prepared in the two processes, participation in the meetings of the Technical Advisory Group of the LADA, the Executive Committee and the Board of the MA.

Between the two projects 27 pilot sites will be surveyed, using mainly the LADA assessment tools.

The sScience and ttechnology programme has continued to follow closely the activities of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) and Land Degradation Assessment in Drylands (LADA), including the provision of comments and input to related documents and participation in meetings.

collaboration on land degradation issues 41 45 13

C. Achievements of the LADA project from 2002 2005

Development of a LADA monitoring tool.

At the regional and subregional levels, FAO has initiated and prepared the Land Degradation Assessment in the Drylands (LADA), used to develop tools and methods to assess and quantify the nature, extent and severity of land degradation.

Establishment of a national LADA task force

This breakthrough followed a planned assessment in November 1997 from which the Sudanese People s Liberation Movement (SPLM) had withdrawn.

As a result of the global land degradation assessment it will be possible to identify

Development of a LADA decision support tool

LADA builds up national, regional and global assessment capacities in order to be able to design and plan interventions to mitigate land degradation.

C. Achievements of the LADA project from 2002 2005 7 40 4

An extract of the indicators to be used for LADA is included in table 1.

The results from the global LADA assessment will also allow Parties to identify potential actions at regional level.

The LADA task force in China, led by the National Bureau to Combat Desertification at the State Forestry Administration, prepared a report on information and experience available on land degradation assessment at national level (available at the LADA virtual centre (http lada.virtualcentre.org pagedisplay display.asp).

It is recommended that in order to facilitate and validate the assessment, the COP should encourage Parties to exchange information with the LADA project on current national or regional activities relating to the assessment of land degradation in drylands.

The results of these studies clearly indicate that the experience of LADA Argentina in assessing land degradation at local level is replicable in other participating countries.

The LADA project has generated about fifty documents from field and desk studies, which are now available in the LADA virtual centre at http lada.virtualcentre.org pagedisplay display.asp.

In addition, the UNEP Division of Early Warning and Assessment is involved in other global environmental assessment activities, such as the Global International Waters Assessment and the Global Marine Assessment, for which UNEP provides leadership and coordination, and the Land Degradation Assessment in Drylands and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, in which UNEP is a key partner.

Based on the outcome of the preparatory studies, a LADA technical workshop, held in November 2002, produced a synthesis of existing methods and national experience and formulated a seven step approach for undertaking the full scale LADA, which is considered as the modular part of the LADA methodological framework. The seven steps of the LADA approach are

LADA also cooperates with UNEP in the Global Environment Outlook (GEO 4) assessment and with Desertlink and MEDCOASTLAND.

One report clearly states that land degradation is not monitored and assessed on account of a shortage of human and financial resources.

Rating the Raters

However, irrigated land in desert areas does come under the umbrella of LADA.

Review and synthesis of data and information of relevance to the development of land degradation assessment in drylands Development, testing and revision of integration of land degradation assessment approaches and methods

Requests the secretariat to report to the Conference of the Parties at its eighth session on progress in the LADA.

This will be the basis of the LADA information network which will be further developed during the implementation of the full project and to which national LADA websites will be linked.