ITTO and UN Convention to Combat Desertification strengthen cooperation on tropical forests

ITTO Executive Director Sheam Satkuru (left) and UNCCD Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw. Photo: C. Christophersen/UNU

Tokyo, Japan, 20 February 2024: ITTO and the Secretariat of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) have committed to another four years of joint work on the sustainable management of tropical forest landscapes under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed today by ITTO Executive Director Sheam Satkuru and UNCCD Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw.

The MOU extends cooperation between the two secretariats to the end of 2028. It is the second such agreement, with the first signed in 2011.

The overall objective of the new MOU is to support ITTO member countries and Country Parties to the UNCCD in restoring and maintaining tropical forest landscapes while promoting the sustainable production of timber and other products and ecosystem services.

Ms Satkuru said the MOU is an important means for strengthening cooperation and enhancing synergies between the two secretariats, both of which are members of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests.

“There is strong complementarity in the work of ITTO and the UNCCD Secretariat,” she said. “We both have missions to enable economic progress while maintaining and strengthening environmental values, and our members and UNCCD Parties stand to benefit when we combine our expertise and resources to achieve synergies and improve outcomes.”

“The collaboration with ITTO to improve the resilience of the vulnerable populations and ecosystems will be important to support UNCCD Parties in addressing desertification, land degradation and drought,” said Mr Thiaw. “These issues will be front and centre at the next UNCCD Conference of the Parties (COP 16) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 2–13 December 2024. We look forward to working together on the road to Riyadh and beyond.”

Under the MOU, ITTO and the UNCCD Secretariat will work together to:

• identify, develop and implement targeted joint activities for the restoration and sustainable management of tropical forests and to enhance the resilience of forest and related communities to drought, floods and wildfires;
• promote capacity building in ITTO producer member countries and facilitate information exchange among countries to advance the implementation of sustainable forest management, sustainable land and water management, ecological rehabilitation/restoration, and integrated land-use planning in tropical areas to support the achievement of land degradation neutrality;
• assist in building the capacity of countries to implement the ITTO Guidelines for Forest Landscape Restoration in the Tropics and other relevant ITTO decisions and internationally acknowledged guidelines and relevant decisions of the UNCCD Conference of the Parties; and
• enhance further collaboration with international organizations and partners to strengthen capacity to implement global forest goals, including the Global Forest Goals and the UN Strategic Plan for Forests 2017–2030 while contributing to Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Potential areas of cooperation include:

• promoting transformative forest landscape restoration supported by appropriate cultural, environmental and social safeguards in tropical areas to support sustainable livelihoods, biodiversity, soil and water conservation, and climate-change mitigation and adaptation;
• exploring collaborative activities with other initiatives to support integrated and inclusive land-use planning and the sustainable management of natural resources in tropical forest landscapes, where both biodiversity and human well-being are maintained and enhanced harmoniously;
• providing guidance on the development of appropriate economic incentives for reducing deforestation and forest degradation in the tropics;
• promoting responsible and inclusive forest governance to support the sustainable management of tropical forest lands;
• assessing and monitoring tropical forest degradation, deforestation, biodiversity loss and carbon emissions;
• jointly developing transformative projects and supporting countries to mobilize resources for implementation;
• supporting regional collaboration and North–South, South–South and triangular cooperation; and
• developing joint activities for disseminating information and sharing experiences on sustainable forest management and land use in tropical forests, including awareness-raising activities for youth, civil-society organizations, the media and the private sector.

For more information on ITTO, visit www.itto.int.

For more information on the UNCCD, visit www.unccd.int.