DE Pres­i­dent, David Oswald, was invit­ed to present at the UNCCD (Unit­ed Nations Con­ven­tion to Com­bat Deser­ti­fi­ca­tion) COP13 con­fer­ence being held in Ordos, Inner Mon­go­lia, Chi­na between Sep­tem­ber 6 to 16, 2017. David pre­sent­ed to the ple­nary for the CRIC (Com­mit­tee for the Review of the Imple­men­ta­tion of the Con­ven­tion) on DE’s work on inte­grat­ed envi­ron­men­tal analy­sis for report­ing to the UNCCD and oth­er MEAs (Mul­ti-Lat­er­al Envi­ron­men­tal Agree­ments). The pre­sen­ta­tion was deliv­ered on Fri­day Sep­tem­ber 8, 2017 to dis­tin­guished del­e­gates rep­re­sent­ing the 195 Par­ties to the Con­ven­tion (down­load pre­sen­ta­tion).

The pre­sen­ta­tion was start­ed with a ref­er­ence to Nin­tai Aiki Ju Jit­su and the need for a ‘Ju Jit­su mind­set’ in this kind of work. The metaphor being that cap­i­tal­iz­ing on posi­tion­ing and lever­age can result in an ampli­fied impact. The adage of “min­i­mum effort, max­i­mum impact” was used, imply­ing that cre­ative design, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and inno­va­tion, can result in sig­nif­i­cant advances in the progress towards the glob­al goal of net zero land degra­da­tion by 2030 and the pur­suit of the LDN (Land Degra­da­tion Neu­tral­i­ty) agen­da. Gen­er­al­ized mod­els were demon­strat­ed and lessons learned from work in the Caribbean was shared as part of the pre­sen­ta­tion which can be down­loaded here.

For more infor­ma­tion on DE’s work in inte­grat­ed envi­ron­men­tal analy­sis con­tact our team or refer to our project pages: C-READ, IICA, SLUMEA, and BDA Foun­da­tion.