By Noel Oettle, Drynet Coordinator
In 2024 Drynet, Both ENDS and IUCN launched the CS4LDN project, entitled “Strengthening Civil Society Role in Achieving Land Degradation Neutrality”. This innovative 3-year project, funded by the Global Environment Facility, creates great opportunities for civil society to engage more proactively with the UNCCD.
Activities supported by the project got underway in the second half of 2025, including a webinar series about the UNCCD and Land Degradation Neutrality and an on-line workshop to prepare CSOs for engagement at CRIC 23 in Panama City in December.
Teams from Drynet member organisations contributed to debates and presented side events at the IUCN Congress and CRIC 23 and twelve young environmentalists joined the Drynet mentorship programme. The Drynet website was redesigned to better serve the CSO community and three Drynet newsletters were published.
This year, Drynet will build on the momentum created by these activities to offer even greater opportunities for civil society to advance solutions to land degradation. As one webinar participant reflected, these capacity-building efforts “have had a significant impact on our organisation, strengthening our ability to implement Land Degradation Neutrality and scale our work at community level.”
To continue strengthening this impact, a second annual series of four UNCCD-related webinars will take participants on a journey of insights and discovery about the Convention and Land Degradation Neutrality. These will be complemented by communication webinars designed to support civil society’s engagement with policymakers and donors, so that actual experiences and findings from community-based sustainable land management and restoration can positively influence policies and priorities of governments.
The Drynet newsletter will continue to inform, inspire and entertain, while the Drynet website will provide easy access to knowledge and learning materials.
This year Drynet will recruit a second cohort of mentees to become effective advocates in the UNCCD processes and mentees will attend the Desertif’Actions Summit in Tunisia in March, and COP 17 in Mongolia in August.
With three Rio Convention COPs taking place in 2026, Drynet will focus on advancing LDN in synergic ways. Online preparatory workshops, preparatory meetings and capacity development workshops at UNCCD COP17 will lay the ground for more effective engagement of civil society. A range of side events will be presented at the UNCCD, CBD and UNFCCC COPs.
According to a webinar participant, the CS4LDN initiative “provides an important opportunity for learning, knowledge sharing, and strengthening civil society engagement in addressing land degradation and climate challenges.”
And as we continue on this trajectory, it promises to be a whirlwind year, with the project enabling civil society to step up even more effectively to meet the challenges faced by dryland communities to survive and thrive.
