The UNEP success stories initiative is helping to develop capacity through the replication of best practices. It is a global programme coordinated from UNEP headquarters, but implemented in close collaboration with UNEP Regional Offices, NGOs and civil society in the regions. The programme evaluates projects or initiatives that have been submitted to UNEP as success stories in land degradation control. The main criterion for a success story requires that activities directly and substantially contribute to the prevention of dryland degradation or to the reclamation of degraded land, using appropriate resources in a cost-effective manner. A success story addresses not only the biophysical but also the socio-cultural-economic issues in all its developmental stages, thus ensuring long-term sustainability.

More than two hundred submissions from Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean have been received at UNEP for consideration as success stories since the implementation of the initiative in 1994. An award scheme, Saving the Drylands, was also developed alongside this initiative in the form of a certificate to outstanding achievers through an on-site evaluation process by teams of independent experts. This was done in the hope that the recognition of success conveyed through the Saving the Drylands award will spur local communities to further action and encourage the replication of promising approaches. Between 1995 and 1999 UNEP presented the Saving the Drylands award to twenty five local projects globally in recognition of their achievements.

The certificate awards have been presented during CCD related events (Desertification Conference in Kazakstan (1995), CCD Day in Nairobi (1996), IFAD financially supported the evaluations and award-giving ceremony for its 20th Anniversary, and with UNCCD participation, in Rome (1997), UNCCD COPs in Dakar(1998), UNCCD COP in Recife (1999). Since 2000 more projects have continued to be received at UNEP and those qualifying as success stories have been included in the Success Stories and Best Practices database for dissemination and knowledge sharing. This report dwells on the twenty-five award-winning case studies.

While similar criteria were used in evaluating the success stories, these successes are not always comparable between regions but rather reflect successful impacts in the context of economic, social, political and environmental aspects of a given location. Thus, the socio-economic, political and environmental impacts of the Pakistan’s Thal Desert success story are different from those achieved by the Sand Encroachment Control project in the Cele County of China or the Wei Wei Integrated Development Project in Kenya. The award giving ceremonies of 1998 to 1999 were at the UNCCD COPs in Dakar, Senegal, and Recife, Brazil, respectively, with poster and workshop sessions to share and exchange ideas with the global community working and living in the drylands. (Source: Success Stories in the Struggle against Desertification; UNEP 2002.)