WINDHOEK, (The Southern African Times) – Namibia has embraced the concept of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) and aims to meet concrete targets that reduce land degradation, an official said Wednesday at the 26th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow, Scotland.
Namibia has put in place several multi-sectoral policies aimed at reinforcing LDN at various levels, said Minister of Environment and Tourism Pohamba Shifeta, according to a statment reaching here.
At the same time, Namibia pledges to contribute to the achievement of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change objectives, he said.
“The most important ones are Vision 2030, which includes goals related to water resources, agriculture production and forest management; and the third National Action Program for Namibia to implement the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (NAP3) 2014-2022, with its six LDN targets,” he said.
“Namibia has also taken a drastic step to ensure that the three Rio Conventions are adequately addressed in the climate change plan under the Paris agreement,” he added.
The three Rio conventions are the three UN conventions formed during the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, also known as the Rio Earth Summit.
According to Shifeta, this is the agenda that Namibia is advocating in terms of implementing initiatives that are in line with the Call to Action on Living Lands that have multiple benefits towards achieving the three Rio Conventions.
“We are very much optimistic that the Call for Action on Living Lands and ultimately the implementation of the three Rio Conventions in Namibia will be a success moving forward,” he added.
Namibia’s environment is highly fragile and vulnerable owing to its geographical characteristics. Over 90 percent of the country is characterized by semi-arid, arid and hyper-arid conditions.
