Page 52 - Çevre Şehir ve İklim Dergisi İngilizce - Özel Sayı

Türkiye Towards the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification Cop16

Germany. Türkiye became a party to the Convention in 1998, and Focal Point
of Türkiye to UNCCD is undertaken by General Directorate of ÇEM under the
Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change.
The objectives of the UNCCD can be listed as promoting land
sustainability, improving the conditions of affected ecosystems, contributing
to the identification of degraded lands, and combating desertification and
land degradation. The bodies of the Convention are; the Conference of the
Parties (COP), the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the
Convention (CRIC), the Committee on Science and Technology (CST), the
Global Mechanism (GM) and the Secretariat.
The COP is the main decision-making body of the Convention. The CRIC is
the auxiliary body that provides information to the COP for the supervision of
UNCCD practices. The CST is the other auxiliary body that provides scientific
information and recommendations to the COP. CST’s publications provide
critical implementation recommendations for country applications. GM is
the financial mechanism of the UNCCD. It was established to implement
UNCCD COP decisions and to assist countries for making financial resources
available to address DLDD - Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought.
The Secretariat performs the functions of assisting the meetings of the COP
and its sub-bodies (CRIC and CST), supporting the developing UNCCD party
countries in the implementation of the UNCCD, coordinating the activities of
the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the UN
Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD) and the UNCCD.
The UNCCD has five regional implementation annexes. These
implementation annexes include African Countries (Annex-I), Asian Countries
(Annex-II), Latin America and Caribbean Countries (Annex-III), Northern
Mediterranean Countries (Annex-IV) and Central and Eastern Europe
Countries (Annex-V). Türkiye is included in UNCCD Annex-IV Northern
Mediterranean Regional Implementation Annex. Other member states in
Annex-IV are Albania, Croatia, Greek Cypriot Area, Greece, Hungary, Israel,
Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain and Slovenia (UNCCD, 2024).
The prominent developments in the UNCCD’s COPs are given in Table 1 below.

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