Digital Earth Africa (DE Africa) participated at the GEO Land Degradation Neutrality Global Dialogue Forum 2023 in Cape Town, South Africa, from 2 to 4 November 2023. This was a pre-conference workshop before GEO Week 2023 that was organised by the GEO-LDN Secretariat. The Forum presented a unique opportunity for country teams to collaborate on integrated land use planning and pursuing Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) targets. The selected participants at the Forum were from Armenia, Benin, Bosnia, Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Iraq, Kenya, Nigeria, Mongolia, Peru, Senegal and South Africa, with a diverse representation across government institutions and civil society organisations.
GEO-LDN has adopted the LDN Toolbox to help partner countries define user needs and develop relevant use cases. The DE Africa platform enables pertinent actors in countries to use Earth observation data to monitor land degradation and work towards LDN.
Highlights of the GEO-LDN Dialogue Forum included discussions around commitments, leveraging Earth observation data, geospatial technologies, and intersectoral collaboration to address challenges related to integrated land use planning and achieving Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) and associated targets. The participants presented a selection of activities, including managing pasture for nomadic communities, monitoring land degradation in river basins, monitoring coastal erosion, regulating mining, and monitoring forests. In addition, the participants acknowledged the need for participatory mapping, the role of local knowledge and the inclusion of communities in addressing land degradation.
The GEO LDN Global Dialogue Forum 2023 provided a platform for policymakers, practitioners, businesses, and civil society to better understand the latest advances in remote sensing applications to monitor land degradation, barriers to overcome, and opportunities realised in different regions. Ultimately, the country teams became part of GEO-LDN's long-term learning journey, fostering sustainable development and collaboration among nations.
Following the Dialogue, there were three parallel training sessions focused on DE Africa, Google Earth Engine, and Trends Earth. DE Africa shared some of its work on land degradation, including collaboration with its implementing partners Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS) in Tunisia and the African Regional Institute for Geospatial Information Science and Technology (AFRIGIST) in Nigeria, showcasing case studies in Burkina Faso and Nigeria, and DE Africa online learning course on Land Degradation, open for enrolment in both English and French.
DE Africa thanks the GEO-LDN Secretariat for the invitation to participate in the Forum and conduct the training session. We look forward to continue engaging with the GEO-LDN community on this journey across the African continent.
The DE Africa mission is to empower countries across Africa with Earth observation data to enable climate adaptation and mitigation, greater food security and more sustainable development. DE Africa provides free access to its platform, data and training materials.
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