Why in News?

• Union Minister for Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEF&CC), and Executive Secretary, UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), jointly inaugurated the 14th Conference of Parties (COP14) to UNCCD.

Conference of the Parties (COP):

• The COP is the supreme decision-making body of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).
• All States that are Parties to the Convention are represented at the COP, at which they review the implementation of the Convention and any other legal instruments that the COP adopts and take decisions necessary to promote the effective implementation of the Convention.
• A key task for the COP is to review the national communications and emission inventories submitted by Parties.
• Based on this information, the COP assesses the effects of the measures taken by Parties and the progress made in achieving the ultimate objective of the Convention.

India and COP 14:

• The Indian union Environment Minister who is also the elected COP President for next two years, expressed India’s resounding commitment to finding a long-term solution for minimizing the impact of desertification and land degradation.
• India being the global host for COP 14 will take over the COP Presidency from China for the next two years till 2021.
• Through hosting COP 14, India will highlight its leadership in navigating the land management agenda at global level. It will also provide a stage to mainstream sustainable land management in country’s national development policies.
• The objective of the COP 14, is to discuss on various issues of land such as sustainable land management, reversing land degradation, mitigating drought, halting desertification, addressing sand and dust storms, linkages with gender, tenure, etc.

UNCCD:

• United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) was adopted in Paris on June 1994 and ratified by 196 countries & European Union.
• This convention can be called as “Mother convention” of the other two Rio Conventions that emerged as a major outcome of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit viz. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).