India, Sept. 23 -- At the just-concluded Conference of Parties (COP) 14 hosted by India under the aegis of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), 196 participating countries and the European Union adopted the 'New Delhi Declaration' wherein they agreed that land degradation is a major economic, social and environmental problem, and welcomed strengthening of the adoption of voluntary "land degradation neutrality" targets that include restoration of degraded land by 2030.

The UNCCD, one of the three environmental conventions running after the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992, (the other two being The United Framework Convention Climate Change and Convention on Biological Diversity) was established in 1994 as a ...