Working Group 4: Decision Support 

Leadership

Key Tasks and Objectives

1. Provide guidance for Policy and Evidence-Based Decision-Making for LDN: WG4 aims to facilitate the use of the latest tools and datasets by decision makers, ensuring fitness for purpose and relevance of the outcomes for policy development and evidence-based decision-making processes such as ILUP, LDN target setting and revision, prioritizing areas for investments, etc. Through tailored support and development of guidelines, workflows and knowledge products, WG4 will bring context and purpose to the GEO LDN community.
2. Co-design Innovative Methodological Workflows: By co-developing and refining methodologies with stakeholders, the working group will outline tested workflows that make use of the different tools and datasets of the GEO LDN toolbox for specific objectives, providing use cases and examples. These efforts will contribute to the enhance flow and interoperability of tools.
3. Identify challenges, successes, and recommendations from countries: WG 4 serves as a conduit for Parties to identify and communicate their challenges, successes, and recommendations regarding the use of geospatial datasets and tools for land degradation neutrality (LDN) implementation. Through collaborative engagements and participatory methodologies, WG 4 will gather comprehensive feedback from diverse stakeholders at global, national, and local levels, ensuring inclusivity and equity, enabling voices from all geographical regions and groups to be represented. By synthesizing and analysing this wealth of experiential knowledge, WG 4 will provide valuable inputs to the UNCCD, data providers and tool developers.
4. Promote South-South Knowledge exchange for LDN: by engaging stakeholders and identifying common needs and strengths, WG4 will support knowledge exchange among projects and countries on evidence based decision making for LDN.

Activities and Achievements

1. Tailored Support for Country Parties: WG 4 aims to deliver targeted support to countries engaged in GEO LDN activities, such as the Global Dialogue Forum, extending beyond the events themselves. Through the facilitation of workshops and technical assistance, the working group is empowering countries and teams achieve their objectives with measurable impacts.
2. Strategic Assistance for LDN Target Setting: WG 4 provides strategic guidance and technical support to countries revising or setting their national voluntary LDN targets.  
3. Co-Development of innovative LDN decision support systems: based on concrete use cases and country’s needs, WG4 will lead the co-development of cloud based LDN Decision Support systems that will allow users integrate national and local knowledge and data with global datasets to implement the principle of Convergence of Evidence to assess and monitor land degradation, as well as to enhance synergies among the UN Conventions.
4. Meta-Analysis and Synthesis of Global Datasets and Tools: Another activity of WG 4 is to take on the task of conducting meta-analyses and synthesis of datasets at the global scale. Through the analysis of alternative datasets, WG4 will identify patterns and trends, critical for understanding the drivers and dynamics of land degradation processes worldwide.

Next Steps

1. In alignment with the Online Support Sessions following the Global Dialogue Forum, WG4 will support and facilitate technical discussions with country teams in order to identify and use the most appropriate datasets and tools to fulfill their objectives.
2. WG4 will provide evidence and feedback to WG2 and WG3 on the specific needs and context relevant adaptations to ensure fitness of purpose of the tools and datasets.
3. Based on previous processes, such as PRAIS4 reporting, and use cases, WG4 will produce scientific papers and guidelines that provide relevant knowledge on the use of different datasets and tools for the implementation of the LDN framework.
4. In close cooperation with WG1, WG4 will co-design trainings and training of trainers for stakeholders, GEO LDN Helpdesks and the UENR postgraduate course on LDN.
5. WG4 will co-organize events and materials to be showcased by the countries and stakeholders during UNCCD COPs and other events

If you would like to join the GEO-LDN working group 4, please fill in this form. You can also find more ways to get involved in GEO-LDN here.