When: 30 August - 6 September

Where: Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire

Meeting dates

UNCCD regional preparatory meeting: 30 August - 2 September

Major Groups and Stakeholders meeting: 1 – 2 September

AMCEN Expert Segment: 3 – 4 September

AMCEN Ministerial Segment: 5 – 6 September

About the session

The tenth special session of the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) regional consultations will be held in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, from 30 August to 6 September 2024, under the theme “Raising Africa’s Ambition to Reduce Land Degradation, Desertification, and Drought.” The theme underscores the critical need to address the current state of land degradation in the region and restore this vital resource.

The Special Session, is being organized in partnership with African Union Commission, African Development Bank,  UN Environment Programme (UNEP), UNCCD, and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, among others.

Context and background

Currently, an estimated 65% of Africa's land is degraded, impacting over 400 million people. According to The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services , land degradation affects 3.2 billion people globally, most of whom are in developing countries. Annually, approximately 4.4 million hectares of productive land are lost to desertification, reducing agricultural productivity and causing undernourishment for about 68.1 million people in Africa. Desertification results in the loss of around 27,000 species each year and costs the global economy 10% of its GDP annually, with sub-Saharan Africa bearing 22% of the total global cost of land degradation. Over 23 million people in the Horn of Africa and another 23.5 million in the Sahel are facing severe food insecurity due to drought and land degradation.

Given the serious challenges posed by land degradation, desertification, and drought in Africa, the region must increase its efforts and ambitions to combat these issues. The 10th Special Session aims to raise the political profile of these issues to prioritize combatting and mitigating their threats. The session will renew commitments and raise ambitions among member states, partners, and stakeholders to enhance resilience to the effects of drought, land degradation, and desertification, and to increase investments to achieve these goals.

To address these challenges, the special session will focus on four policy areas: 

1. strengthening efforts to mitigate droughts in Africa, 
2. raising ambitions to meet Africa’s land degradation neutrality targets,
3. enhancing opportunities for ecosystem restoration, 
4. forging partnerships and synergies to enhance the implementation of agreed targets and resource mobilization.

The outcomes of the session will be presented at the UNCCD COP16, the African Union processes including the Committee of African Heads of State and Government on Climate Change, and the Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union in early 2025.

Registration

All participants will be required to pre-register prior for the UNCCD regional consultation, the pre-AMCEN major groups and stakeholder meeting and, the 10^th special session. 

Participants will pre-register at the following link https://indico.un.org/e/10thAMCEN

Professional journalists and other media representatives are also invited to register via the same link : https://indico.un.org/e/10thAMCEN.

For more information, please contact:

Allan Meso, AMCEN Secretariat

Siyad Fayoumi, Public Information Officer, UNEP