Desertification and Land Preservation: A Call to Action from IFLA at COP16

Desertification and Land Preservation: A Call to Action from IFLA at COP16

IFLA delegates actively participated in COP16 in Riyadh, focusing on a pressing issue: the lack of an institutionalized landscape architecture profession in countries most affected by desertification and land degradation.

Session Highlight: Leveraging Water as an Opportunity for Green and Resilient Urban Development
This session, convened by UN-Habitat, explored how urban water planning and management can transform challenges such as floods, droughts, and land degradation into opportunities for creating resilient and inclusive cities. Nadine Bitar Chahine, IFLA Middle East, delivered an exceptional presentation, highlighting how landscape architects in the region are addressing water scarcity and land degradation.

In another session titled ‘Financing Challenges and Opportunities in the Sahel Region, Africa’, Nadine spoke about IFLA’s global reach and its capacity to support regional initiatives aimed at combating land degradation and fostering sustainable development.

IFLA is attuned to the regional realities as an international organization. One challenge is filtering down policies to the settlement level, the city, and metropolitan landscapes, and translating them into strategic actions to combat desertification. Another challenge is capacity building.

Inspiring Example: Redeveloping a Derelict Soccer Stadium

At the official side event of the UNEP and UNECE UNCCD COP16, Graham Young, IFLA Africa President and IFLA Delegate representing IFLA EXCO, presented and participated in a panel at the session, ‘Rethinking Urban Landscapes: Equity, Restoration, and Resilience in Arid Regions’. He presented a compelling model for redeveloping a derelict soccer stadium in Pretoria, South Africa, into a city park. He showed how the site could be developed to achieve net zero runoff, whereby grey water from a nearby shopping center and harvested rainwater can be stored in an underground tank for use, while city authorities could gain revenue from renting the common areas, retail outlets, and advertising boards.

IFLA’s Commitment
The participation at COP16 underscored IFLA’s and IFLA’s regional team’s dedication to addressing global challenges such as desertification and land degradation through innovative, nature-based solutions and advocacy for a stronger institutional presence of landscape architecture in the most affected regions.