Introduction

Background

By its decision 7/COP.13, the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) adopted the UNCCD 2018–2030 Strategic Framework, containing five strategic objectives (SOs) and an implementation framework. The SOs are:

• SO 1: To improve the condition of affected ecosystems, combat desertification/land degradation, promote sustainable land management and contribute to land degradation neutrality;

• SO 2: To improve the living conditions of affected populations;

• SO 3: To mitigate, adapt to, and manage the effects of drought in order to enhance resilience of vulnerable populations and ecosystems;

• SO 4: To generate global environmental benefits through effective implementation of the UNCCD; and

• SO 5: To mobilize substantial and additional financial and non-financial resources to support the implementation of the Convention by building effective partnerships at global and national level.

The implementation framework defines the roles and responsibilities of Parties and Convention institutions in meeting the SOs. For Parties, the implementation framework sets specific aims under three broad headings: (a) financial and non-financial resources; (b) policy and planning; and © actions on the ground.

Progress made in the implementation of the UNCCD 2018–2030 Strategic Framework has been regularly reviewed through the national reporting process since 2018. The reporting procedures, as well as the role and responsibilities of the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC) in reviewing the reports, are spelled out in decisions 13/COP.13 and 15/COP.13.

Purpose of national reporting

Up-to-date information on measures taken, results achieved and challenges faced by country Parties is of critical importance for the COP to be able to adopt targeted decisions and guidance aimed at supporting the effective achievement of the SOs. The information communicated by Parties through reporting is valuable also for other stakeholders that work on the implementation of the UNCCD at national and local levels. From these viewpoints, national reporting is an indispensable tool to bringing forward effective planning and implementation of the Convention and the achievement of the SOs at global and national level.

Since 2018, the UNCCD reporting process has also contributed to the follow-up of progress in implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. As the custodian agency for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicator 15.3.1 “Proportion of land that is degraded over total land area”, the UNCCD secretariat is requested to use relevant information submitted in the national reports as a contribution to the overall follow-up and review by the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.

Indicator and monitoring framework

The UNCCD indicator and monitoring framework has a hierarchical structure that makes it possible to distinguish what to measure (progress indicators) and how it should be measured (metrics/proxies).

Indicators used for reporting on progress towards the SOs are those adopted by Parties in decision 7/COP.13, 9/COP.13 and 11/COP.14. In addition to the indicators adopted by the COP, five newly proposed indicators (i.e. SO 2-3, SO 4-3, SO 5-3, SO 5-4 and SO 5-5) will be tested during the 2022 reporting process. All newly proposed indicators will be considered optional in reporting until the COP takes a decision on whether to formally adopt them. Integrating them in the forthcoming reporting process will enable Parties to assess the suitability of the indicators for measuring progress towards the SOs and take an informed decision at the twentieth session of the CRIC held in conjunction with the COP. Table 1 through table 5 below contain an overview of the indicators, their related metrics/proxies and their statuses (i.e. whether the indicator is officially adopted, and if so, when it was adopted; or whether it is newly proposed and will be tested in the forthcoming reporting process). The tables also provide information on the reporting attributions.

Reporting on the implementation framework will be done through qualitative information, largely by narratives on national experiences, and on a voluntary basis.

Table 1. Strategic objective (SO) 1 indicators and reporting attribution

Indicator code	Indicator name	Metrics / proxies	Adopted / proposed	Reporting attribution
				Affected country Parties	Developed country Parties
SO 1-1	Trends in land cover	Land cover change	Indicator adopted in decision 7/COP.13	X	*1
SO 1-2	Trends in land productivity or functioning of the land	Land productivity dynamics	Indicator adopted in decision 7/COP.13	X
SO 1-3	Trends in carbon stocks above and below ground	Soil organic carbon stock	Indicator adopted in decision 7/COP.13	X
SO 1-4	Proportion of land that is degraded over total land area	—	Background for indicator adopted in decision 9/COP.13	X

Table 2. Strategic objective (SO) 2 indicators and reporting attributions

Indicator code	Indicator name	Metrics / proxies	Adopted / proposed	Reporting attribution
				Affected country Parties	Developed country Parties
SO 2-1	Trends in population living below the relative poverty line and/or income inequality in affected areas	Proportion of the population below the international poverty line OR Income inequality	Indicator adopted in decision 7/COP.13	X	—
SO 2-2	Trends in access to safe drinking water in affected areas	Proportion of population using safely managed drinking water services	Indicator adopted in decision 7/COP.13	X	—
SO 2-3	Trends in the proportion of the population exposed to land degradation, disaggregated by sex	Proportion of the population exposed to land degradation, disaggregated by sex	Indicator proposed in response to decision 11/COP.14, which requested the Secretariat to align reporting for SOs 1– 5 with gender-responsive indicators	Optional	—

Table 3. Strategic objective (SO) 3 indicators and reporting attributions

Indicator code	Indicator name	Metrics / proxies	Adopted / proposed	Reporting attribution
				Affected country Parties	Developed country Parties
SO 3-1	Trends in the proportion of land under drought over the total land area	Proportion of land in each drought intensity class as defined by the Standardized Precipitation Index	Indicator adopted in decision 7/COP.14	X	—
SO 3-2	Trends in the proportion of the total population exposed to drought	Proportion of the population exposed to drought, disaggregated by sex	Indicator adopted in decision 7/COP.14	X	—
SO 3-3	Trends in the degree of drought vulnerability	Drought Vulnerability Index	Indicator adopted in decision 7/COP.14	X	—

Table 4. Strategic objective (SO) 4 indicators and reporting attributions

Indicator code	Indicator name	Metrics / proxies	Adopted / proposed	Reporting attribution
				Affected country Parties	Developed country Parties
SO 4-1	Trends in carbon stocks above and below ground	Trends in carbon stocks above and below ground is a multipurpose indicator used to measure progress towards both strategic objectives 1 and 4. See progress indicator SO 1-3.
SO 4-2	Trends in abundance and distribution of selected species	Red List Index	Indicator adopted in decision 7/COP.13	X	—
SO 4-3	Trends in protected area coverage of important biodiversity areas	Average proportion of Terrestrial Key Biodiversity Areas covered by protected areas	Complementary indicator and corresponding metric proposed in response to CRIC 17 recommendations and decision 7/COP.13.	Optional	—

Table 5. Strategic objective (SO) 5 indicators and reporting attributions

Indicator code	Indicator name	Metrics / proxies	Adopted / proposed	Reporting attribution
				Affected country Parties	Developed country Parties
SO 5-1	Bilateral and multilateral public resources	—	Indicator adopted in decision 7/COP.13 as ‘Trends in international bilateral and multilateral official development assistance’	X	X
SO 5-2	Domestic public resources	—	Indicator adopted in decision 7/COP.13 as ‘Trends in domestic public resources’	X	X
SO 5-3	International and domestic private resources	—	Indicators proposed in response to decision 11/COP.14, which requested the Global Mechanism to include additional quantitative data in the reporting template for SO 5 and provide information before the start of the next reporting process on the possible development of progress indicators on technology transfer under SO 5	Optional	Optional
SO 5-4	Technology transfer	—		Optional	Optional
SO 5-5	Future support for activities related to the implementation of the Convention	—		Optional	Optional

Reporting tools

Since the 2018 reporting process, the performance review and assessment of implementation system (PRAIS) has been upgraded to bring it into line with modern systems architecture and the requests made by Parties at the fourteenth session of the COP. PRAIS 4 will offer the following improvements over PRAIS 3, among other things:

• A more user-friendly interface, including web-based reporting forms pre-filled with default data derived from global data sources. Information entered in the forms will be summarized in standalone country reports, downloadable and sharable outside the system. The system will also include additional data fields specific to affected areas for SOs 1 to 4;

• A centralized database to securely store and manage country-submitted data;

• New functionality to ingest and manage large geospatial datasets; this will permit the user to define, for instance, the location and boundaries of land degradation hotspots or zones of voluntary land degradation neutrality targets;

• Analytical, synthesis and visualization functions for the submitted data 2.

The following reporting tools will be made available to country Parties in the six official United Nations languages:

• The PRAIS 4 user manual, which provides step-by-step procedures for system access and use;

• This reporting manual, which provides step-by-step methodological guidance for the preparation of national reports;

• An updated glossary of reporting terms and definitions.

In addition, Parties can also refer to the following methodological reference documents (in English only):

• Version 2 of the Good Practice Guidance for SDG Indicator 15.3.1: Proportion of land that is degraded over total land area;

• Good Practice Guidance for National Reporting on UNCCD Strategic Objective 3.

Data analytics tools

In line with decision 11/COP.14, Conservation International has further enhanced and expanded Trends.Earth to support the preparation and analysis of data for UNCCD national reporting in a format that can be automatically transferred to PRAIS.

Trends.Earth is a free and open-source tool for monitoring indicators of land change. More specifically, Trends.Earth supports:

• The calculation of the SO 1 indicators, including SDG Indicator 15.3.1, following version 2 of the Good Practice Guidance for SDG Indicator 15.3.1;

• The recalculation of SDG indicator 15.3.1, accounting for any reported false positive and false negative degradation processes;

• The calculation of indicator SO 2-3: Trends in the proportion of population exposed to land degradation, disaggregated by sex;

• The calculation of the SO 3 indicators following the Good Practice Guidance for National Reporting on UNCCD Strategic Objective 3;

• Access to global data sources, including default data sources for national reporting;

• Integration of nationally or locally available data and nationally determined assumptions;

• Data transfer to PRAIS.

Default data

With a view to reducing the reporting burden and in accordance with the procedure established in decision 22/COP.11, the PRAIS 4 forms will be pre-filled with default national estimates based on available global data sources. Country Parties will have the possibility to verify or replace these national estimates using data sourced/computed nationally/locally.

In order to provide national-level extracts of the global data sources for national reporting, the United Nations Geospatial Hub (hereinafter referred to as UN Map Data) was used, which is a worldwide geospatial database consisting of country and geographic name information and a coherent alignment of national boundaries for consistent representation on a global scale. UN Map Data includes geospatial web services, which aim to provide a contextual global webservices background to the international community. The current flagship United Nations geospatial service is entitled Clear Map3 (hereinafter referred to as UN Clear Map). UN Clear Map was originally designed and created for the use of the United Nations Secretariat and system for their website and related web products, but is now a publicly available resource subject to the terms of use. The UN Clear Map service is available in PRAIS 4 in different cartographic styles and web canvases to give countries context for the geospatial reporting data. However, the UN Clear Map has scale constraints, as it cannot be used beyond a map scale of 1:4.5 million. As the PRAIS 4 map view is fixed to the extent of the country boundaries, countries which are fixed at scales finer than this will not be able to use UN Clear Map. Alternative web map services are provided for context at finer scales to compensate for the scale constraints of UN Clear Map.

The UN Map Data has been prepared by the United Nations Geospatial Information Section (formerly Cartographic Section) in New York. The designations employed and the presentation of material contained in the UN Map Data do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the UNCCD concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

Countries wishing to replace the default national estimates using nationally or locally available data are advised and encouraged to use Trends.Earth for the preparation, analysis and transfer of their data into PRAIS. This includes the use of a national border which differs from the UN Map Data used for the preparation of the default datasets described above. Careful consideration should be given to the use of an alternative national border in that it must be consistent with the total land area reported under SO 1-1. Otherwise, discrepancies may arise in the reporting data derived from geospatial analysis using that border.

Open data sharing

By its decision 16/COP.11, the COP requested the secretariat to ensure that data and information from the reporting process are available and accessible to all, especially at the national and local levels.

When uploading data to PRAIS, particularly spatial data and associated attribute data, country Parties will be prompted to choose whether to: (i) use an existing Creative Commons licence; or (ii) use an existing licence of their own.

These options aim to empower country Parties reporting through PRAIS to set the terms of use of the national data uploaded or created as part of the reporting process. Country Parties are free to choose a licence that meets their requirements. However, most of the default data provided to Parties through PRAIS and Trends.Earth is already in the public domain as described here, while other default datasets have been licenced by their respective data providers, namely the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative Land Cover and the International Soil Reference and Information Centre SoilGrids, under an Attribution-ShareAlike licence. Thus, these datasets are subject to the terms of the Attribution-ShareAlike license. Users of these datasets, such as the UNCCD and its Parties, must reshare the data on the same terms granted by the licensor and with proper attribution to them. For more information on the issue of data sharing, see Annex I of this reporting manual.

Reporting frequency

By its decision 15/COP. 13, the COP approved a four-year frequency for national reporting. During the first reporting process under the UNCCD 2018–2030 Strategic Framework in 2018, Parties reported data and information for the baseline period 2000–2015. From the 2022 reporting process onward, Parties will quantify the indicators and report national estimates for four-year reporting periods as indicated in table 6 below.

Table 6. UNCCD reporting process and corresponding reporting periods (current reporting process and period in bold)

UNCCD Reporting Process	UNCCD Reporting Periods
2018	Baseline 2000-2015
2022	2016-2019
2026	2020-2023
2030	2024-2027
2034	2028-2031

Recalculations and time series consistency

Advances in methodologies and data availability may require periodic recalculations of previously submitted national estimates. While recalculations may require refinements in terms of target-setting, they ensure the consistency of the time series and the comparability between the baseline and future monitoring data.

In this reporting process, the key reasons for recalculation, accompanied by explanatory information (including the quantitative impact of the recalculation on (i) the baseline estimates compared with the baseline reported in 2018; and (ii) previously submitted national targets), should be reported. A separate reporting form has been created in PRAIS 4 for this purpose.

For instance, given the evolution of the calculation methods presented in version 2 of the Good Practice Guidance for SDG Indicator 15.3.1, it is recommended that previously submitted baseline estimates of all SO 1 indicators, including SDG Indicator 15.3.1, be recalculated and included in the national report to be submitted in 2022. Default national estimates provided through the PRAIS forms have already been recalculated for country Parties using the new calculation methods. Therefore, recalculation methods should only be reported if opting to use national datasets.

For a broader discussion on the issue of recalculations, see chapter 6 of version 2 of the Good Practice Guidance for SDG Indicator 15.3.1.

Process and schedule for the 2022 reporting process

The 2022 reporting process is expected to commence in November 2021, contingent on the timing of the PRAIS 4 launch. If reporting commences at the beginning of November 2021, the deadline for submission of national reports could be May 2022, still pending a final decision by the Executive Secretary and the CRIC Bureau, who will assess progress made in reporting by Parties early next year.

Various measures will be taken to support Parties in preparing the national reports and providing high quality information:

• Capacity development activities will be organized starting in November 2021. Due to COVID-19 and related travel restrictions, those capacity development activities will have to be designed as online tuition and webinars aimed at introducing national focal points and assigned reporting officers to the new reporting requirements, methodologies, data and tools;

• The secretariat and the Global Mechanism, with the assistance of consultants, will provide technical backstopping throughout the reporting process;

• An online helpdesk facility will be available via PRAIS 4 to respond to queries from Parties;

• National reports will undergo a quality assurance procedure prior to final submission to ensure the provision of consistent, transparent, comparable, accurate and complete information.

At its twenty-first session, the CRIC will review and analyse the information submitted during the 2022 reporting process.

---

1

Indicators under SO 1 and SDG indicator 15.3.1 are optional for reporting by developed country Parties. Developed country Parties may wish to submit information on these indicators on a voluntary basis for the purpose of reporting on progress towards the SDGs.

2

Delivery of analytical, synthesis and visualization functions expected in September - December 2022.

3

https://geoportal.un.org/arcgis/home/item.html?id=541557fd0d4d42efb24449be614e6887.