Indian Climate Activist gets UN Land for Life Award

• 19 Jun 2021

Familial Forestry, an environmental conservation project by Rajasthan's Shyam Sunder Jyani, bagged the prestigious United Nations' Land for Life Award 2021.

• United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) announced the winner on June 17 2021 (World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, observed with the theme “Restoration.Land.Recovery. We build back better with healthy land”).
• Through his project about 2.5 million trees have been planted in a time span of 15 years.
• Two candidates had been shortlisted from India - the other being Jaggi Vasudev, popularly known as Sadguru, who has been campaigning for environmental cause for several years.

The Concept of Familial Forestry

• Familial Forestry is a unique concept that relates a tree with a family, making it a green "family member."
• Placing a family at the cornerstone of society, the concept ensures the success of any social campaign.
• Familial Forestry means transferring the care of tree and environment in the family so that a tree becomes a part of the family’s consciousness.

About the Award

• Launched at the UNCCD COP (Conference of Parties) 10 in 2011, the Land for Life Award is considered as the world's highest reward regarding land conservation and restoration.
• This year's theme for the award was "Healthy Land, Healthy Lives".
• The award is given by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
• The Land for Life Award ceremony will take place in August 2021 at the Eighth Kubuqi International Desert Forum in China. The award winner will also have an opportunity to present their work at the UNCCD Fifteenth Conference of the Parties UNCCD COP15.

About UNCCD

• The UNCCD is one of the three Rio Conventions—along with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
• The negotiation of the UNCCD was called for in Agenda 21, the programme of action adopted at the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED, or Earth Summit).
• The UNCCD was adopted in Paris, France on 17 June 1994, entered into force on 26 December 1996.
• It is the only internationally legally binding framework set up to address the problem of desertification. It has 197 parties, making it near universal in reach.