{"id":314946,"date":"2019-09-09T11:32:23","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T11:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=314946"},"modified":"2019-09-09T11:32:23","modified_gmt":"2019-09-09T11:32:23","slug":"india-will-restore-26-million-hectares-of-degraded-land-by-2030-pm-modi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/india-will-restore-26-million-hectares-of-degraded-land-by-2030-pm-modi\/","title":{"rendered":"India will restore 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030: PM Modi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-314947 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/modi-unccp.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"665\" height=\"501\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2019\/09\/modi-unccp.jpg 665w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2019\/09\/modi-unccp-300x226.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2019\/09\/modi-unccp-80x60.jpg 80w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2019\/09\/modi-unccp-557x420.jpg 557w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 665px) 100vw, 665px\" \/>Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday inaugurated the\u00a0High-Level Segment Meeting of the\u00a014th\u00a0Conference of Parties (COP14)\u00a0to the\u00a0United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD),\u00a0at Expo Mart, Greater Noida.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">During his address, Prime Minister Modi announced, \u201cIndia would raise its ambition of the total area that would be restored from its land degradation status, from twenty-one million hectares to twenty-six million hectares between now and 2030\u201d.\u00a0This will be focused on restoring land productivity and ecosystem services of 26 million hectares of most degraded and vulnerable land, with emphasis on the degraded agricultural, forest and other wastelands by adopting a landscape restoration approach.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">PM Modi also announced India\u2019s proposal to setup a global technical support institute for the member countries of the UNCCD for their capacity building and support regarding the Land Degradation Neutrality Target Setting Program. \u201cI am happy to state that India would be happy to help other friendly countries develop land restoration strategies through cost effective satellite and space technology\u201d, said the Prime Minister.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Acknowledging the importance of the role of water, Modi called upon the leadership of UNCCD to conceive a global water action agenda which is central to the Land Degradation Neutrality strategy. \u201cWhen we address degraded lands, we also address water scarcity. Augmenting water supply, enhancing water recharge, slowing down water run-off and retaining moisture in the soil are all parts of a holistic land and water strategy,\u201d said Modi.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The Prime Minister also advocated on the need to eradicate the menace of single use plastic, he stated \u201cMy Government has announced that India will put an end to single use plastic in the coming years.\u00a0 I believe the time has come for even the world to say good-bye to single use plastic\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Union Minister Prakash Javadekar in his opening remarks lauded the Prime Minister\u2019s efforts towards green activities, \u201cPrime Minister played a leading role in\u00a0Paris Summit; he has been the guiding force behind India&#8217;s ambitious program of achieving 175 GW of\u00a0renewable\u00a0energy production\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The Environment Minister pointed out that the COP14 has emerged as a global platform to discuss matters of great importance concerning the environment, he stated \u201cMore than 190 Countries, 100 Ministers and 8000 participants from all across the globe came together to discuss and work on promotion of land restoration and climate resilience at\u00a0UNCCD COP14\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves also spoke at length on climate change and desertification. He also acknowledged the Prime Minister for his concerted efforts in addressing these issues. \u201cWe all should stand united to resolve the\u00a0Climate Change\u00a0issue and make\u00a0UNCCD COP14\u00a0path breaking. I acknowledge the role of Government of India &amp; initiatives of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for environment\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">Noting the five summits to be held in New York soon, Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD Executive Secretary, said \u201cthe agreements we reach here about how to restore, protect and manage our land on a massive scale and how to trigger a seismic shift in private sector partnerships to make it happen can immediately help ramp up the ambition of action plans for everyone involved\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday inaugurated the\u00a0High-Level Segment Meeting of the\u00a014th\u00a0Conference of Parties (COP14)\u00a0to the\u00a0United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD),\u00a0at Expo Mart, Greater Noida. During his address, Prime Minister Modi announced, \u201cIndia would raise its ambition of the total area that would be restored from its land degradation status, from twenty-one million hectares [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":314947,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2009,2014,2015],"tags":[2056,316,11786],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314946"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314948,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314946\/revisions\/314948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/314947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}