Gnacadja served in the government of Benin as Minister of the Environment, Housing, and Urban Planning from June 1999 to February 2005 under long-time President Mathieu Kérékou.

[1] Due to major political changes taking place since 2005, particularly with President Kérékou barred from running again by a two-term limit and an age limit of 70 years for candidates, Gnacadja ran for president as the unique candidate of the Envol movement[2] in the March 2006 presidential election,[3] receiving 11th place and 0.68% of the vote in the first round.

His vision of the UNCCD process was based on moving the Convention towards effective implementation through evidence-based policymaking, target setting and monitoring of implementation by means of agreeing a strong and globally trusted set of impacts and progress indicators by the scientific community; so as to build a strong and authoritative science and policy interface for the Convention.

Accordingly, the Conference of the Parties (COP) at its eighth session in 2007 decided that future sessions of the Committee on Science and Technology[9] (CST) shall be organized in a predominantly scientific and technical conference-style format and focus on a specific thematic topic relevant to the implementation of The ten-year Strategy[10] to enhance the implementation of the Convention (2008-2018), to be determined in advance by the COP[11] The UNCCD 3rd Scientific Conference[12] on “Combating Desertification, Land Degrdation and Drought (DLDD) for poverty reduction and sustainable development: the contribution of science, technology, traditional knowledge and practices” (decision 18/COP.10) is expected to be held in March 2015 in Mexico.

Gnacadja is an honorary councillor[17] of The World Future Council[18] (WFC) launched in 2007 in Hamburg, Germany by Jakob von Uexkull.