Ministerial consultation on Sahel’s Great Green Wall Initiative to take place in Bonn, Germany

Germany, 16 February 2011 “ Environment ministers from Africa’s Sahel region will be meeting at the World Conference Center Bonn, Germany, on Saturday, 19 February 2011 to agree on the modalities for the use of the financial resources that have been mobilized towards creating and promoting policies and activities for natural resource management across eleven countries that stretch from the Senegal to the West to Djibouti in the East. In particular, the ministerial consultation will focus on the over US$119 million the Global Environment Facility (GEF) has earmarked as part of this initiative.

According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the GEF, which are co-hosting the consultations, the impact of the Great Green Wall Initiative will be about 7,775 km long and 15 km wide. This is approximately 11.7 million hectares, equal to the size of Benin, Honduras, Bulgaria or twice the size of Ireland. The impact is the sustainable management of natural resources on up to 2 million hectares of land, and the sequestration of up to 3.1 million tons of carbon every year.

The ministerial consultation is organized on the margins of the second special session of the Committee on Science and Technology of the UNCCD (CST S-2) and the ninth special session of the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC 9). The ministerial consultation will be preceded by an expert-group meeting on Friday, 18 February. It is expected that a ministerial declaration will be issued at the end of the ministerial meeting.

The opening session of the ministerial meeting scheduled for 9:00-9:30 am is open to all journalists accredited to CST S2 and CRIC 9. Mr Manfred Konukiewitz, Deputy Director General Global and Sectoral Policies and Commissioner for Climate Policy, Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany, Mr. Luc Gnacadja, Executive Secretary of the UNCCD, Ms Monique Barbut, Chief Executive of the GEF will address the session.

The eleven countries involved in the Initiative are Burkina Faso, Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sudan.

About the UNCCD:
Established in 1994, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is the sole legally binding international
agreement linking environment and development issues to the land agenda. The Convention focuses on all the world’s dryland, home to over 2 billion people, 50% of the world’s livestock and accounting for 44% of all cultivated ecosystems. The Convention’s 194 Parties are dedicated to combating land degradation and mitigating the effects of drought in the dry lands by improving the living conditions of the affected populations and ecosystems.

By Wagaki Mwangi, UNCCD Secretariat
Email: wmwangi@unccd.int