Panama, November 29, 2025
Organized by the UNCCD Secretariat in collaboration with the Partnership Initiative on Sustainable Land Management (PISLM), Apacheta, UNEP, and with the GEF support, the SIDS (Small Island Developing States) Forum was held on the margins of the 23rd session of the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC23) and brought together representatives of SIDS, regional institutions and international experts to build land monitoring capacities, promote data sovereignty, and encourage solutions grounded in local knowledge and next-generation geospatial tools.
Mr. Mustapha MIMOUNI, Technology, Information and Remote Sensing Department Director and OSS representative, presented lessons learned from the Organization’s support to Seychelles under the UMBRELLA project and emphasized the strategic importance of reporting for countries and regions, as well as the OSS role as a regional support center for more than 22 African countries in reporting on SDG indicator 15.3.1 to the UNCCD.
He also recalled that reporting is not only an international requirement, but also a structuring tool for national decision-making that enables countries to generate a clear picture of the state of their land resources, facilitates access to climate and environmental finance, strengthens interinstitutional coordination, and supports long-term sustainable land management policies.
The two-decade experience in supporting African and Sahelo-Saharan countries in monitoring land degradation, producing harmonized geospatial datasets, building national capacities on UNCCD, LDN and PRAIS tools, and developing technical approaches fostering national data ownership, was also highlighted as a key contribution to the Forum’s objectives.
The OSS participation in this event reflects its unfailing commitment to building national and regional capacities, promoting scalable technologies adapted to the specific contexts of African countries in general and island states in particular, supporting countries in achieving Land Degradation Neutrality, and contributing actively to international environmental processes.