Page 51 - Çevre Şehir ve İklim Dergisi İngilizce - Özel Sayı

Salih Serdar Yegül - Nur Aslıhan Karaman
Murat Türkeş

1. Introduction

The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) is one of the three
environmental conventions adopted by the United Nations (UN) Conference
on Environment and Development in 1992.
Türkiye, which carried out significant studies on combating desertification
and erosion before 1998, has performed important activities in accordance with
the implementation recommendations of the UNCCD since becoming a Party
to the UNCCD in that year. The most significant one, among these activities,
is undoubtedly the establishment of General Directorate for Combating
Desertification and Erosion (ÇEM) in 2011 to strengthen the institutional structure.
Among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) accepted by the UN
General Assembly in September 2015, 15th SDG titled as “Life on Land” (and
15.3rd Target under this goal) falls within the duties of UNCCD.
The 15th SDG (Target 15.3), one of the 17 SDGs of the UN, played an
important role in shaping the decisions of the Twelfth Session of the UNCCD
Conference of the Parties (COP12) held in Ankara, Türkiye, in October 2015.
At COP12, parties to the UNCCD agreed on establishing the national goals of
Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN). Türkiye has been one of the first countries
to set LDN goals. Besides, Türkiye conducted “Ankara Initiative” between
2016-2021 in order to support the achievement of the SDGs, improve the
capacities of the countries of the region in this respect and contribute to the
countries regarding LDN. In line with the initiative, Türkiye organized regional
capacity building trainings for relevant representatives from regional countries
on successful Sustainable Land Management (SLM) implementation practices.
This article, at first, expresses activities, and their contents, to be realised
on combating the desertification in line with implementation proposals of
UNCCD, on the basis of the substantial knowledge of Türkiye, in the scope
of UNCCD COP16 Agenda. At the further stage, the process of determining
Türkiye’s country position on the basis of these activities and the country
remarks formed at the end of this process are presented with examples.

2. United Nations Convention to Combat
Desertification (UNCCD) 1

Three environmental conventions were adopted at the UN Conference on
Environment and Development in 1992, and UNCCD is among them. The
headquarters of the Convention, having 197 state parties, is located in Bonn,

1 https://www.unccd.int/convention/overview

38 Journal of Environment, Urban and Climate