UNCCD COP16 Spotlights Drought But Fails to Agree on a Legally Binding Protocol

By Stella Paul
RIYADH & HYDERABAD, Dec 17 2024 – The 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP 16) concluded early hours of Saturday with a renewed focus on building drought resilience globally. However, the COP also failed to agree on bringing a legally binding drought protocol. Like the biodiversity and climate change COPs held earlier in the year, COP16 also failed to finish in time and ended by postponing several key decisions to COP17 scheduled to be held in 2026.

The COP started on December 2 in Riyadh, under the presidency of Saudi Arabia. On Saturday, in a press statement, Osama Faqeeha, Deputy Minister for Environment, Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture, and Advisor to the UNCCD COP16 Presidency, claimed that the conference was a resounding success because it had attracted the largest number of participants till date, representing diverse sectors.

“The Riyadh Action Agenda has already helped galvanize state and non-state actors around the world. However, COP16 in Riyadh is just the beginning of its impact, and Saudi Arabia’s UNCCD COP16 Presidency will continue to engage with everyone, from the investment community, NGOs and scientists to Indigenous Peoples and farmers, to maximize its lasting global legacy,” he said.

One of the biggest success stories scripted in Riyadh was the launch of a drought resilience initiative, which also saw contributions of over USD 12 billion for land restoration and drought resilience. Launching the initiative on the first day of the COP, Saudi Arabia announced it was contributing USD 150 million for its operationalization. The rest of the fund was pledged by the Arab Coordination Group, which has 22 member countries, including the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain. The initiative would aim to support 80 of the world’s most vulnerable countries to increase their capacity to combat the effects of drought and build their drought resilience.

“The Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership will work to deliver a transformative shift in how drought is tackled around the world. Harnessing the collective impact of major global institutions will move drought management beyond reactive crisis response through enhancing early warning systems, financing, vulnerability assessments, and drought risk mitigation. This stands to be a landmark moment for combating international drought, and we are calling on countries, companies, organizations, scientists, NGOs, financial institutions and communities to join this pivotal partnership,” Faqeeha said.

AI For Combating Drought

As part of the Riyadh Action Agenda, Saudi Arabia’ also launched the International Drought Resilience Observatory (IDRO). This is the first artificial intelligence-driven global platform that will help countries assess and improve their ability to cope with more severe droughts. This innovative tool is an initiative of the International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA).

Saudi Arabia also announced the launch of an international sand and dust storm monitoring initiative. This effort, part of a regional early warning system, aims to complement existing efforts overseen by the World Meteorological Organization. Based in Jeddah, the Sand and Dust Storm Warning Advisory and Assessment System (SDS-WAS) increases the number of global World Meteorological Organization-affiliated nodes to four. Saudi Arabia also pledged $10 million in funding over the next five years to enhance early warning systems in countries currently unable to monitor for sand and dust storms.

However, despite their best efforts, the COP16 could not bring all negotiators to agree on its proposal of creating a legally binding treaty for action on drought. The protocol, if agreed upon, could have been a huge step forward, having the world’s first legally binding global treaty on drought, land degradation and desertification, equivalent to the UNFCCC’s Paris Agreement and the Global Biodiversity Framework.

Paving Greater Participation of Youths and IPLCs

Among the other decisions taken at the COP16 is the creation of a Youth Caucus and an Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Caucus. Though a caucus within the COP has an advisory role without any voting power, it can help broaden the participation of the Indigenous people and provide an opportunity to them for lobbying for language concerning Indigenous issues in the future negotiation texts.

Reacting to the development, Jennifier Corpuz, leader of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB), an umbrella organization of Indigenous Peoples and local communities from seven global regions, said that it was a decision that had been long overdue.

“The decision by the UNCCD to support the development of a Terms of Reference for an Indigenous Peoples Caucus and a local communities caucus is a great development for enhancing rights-holder engagement in the work of the UNCCD. It is the last Rio Convention to support the establishment of an IP Caucus and the first to explicitly support a specific local community Caucus, so it is about time, even long overdue. The hope is that the new UNCCD IP and LC caucuses learn from the nest practices and enhanced participation arrangements established in the other Rio Conventions and avoid the mistakes,” Corpuz told IPS News.

UN Warns Against Business-As-Usual Approach

Meanwhile, throughout COP16 in Riyadh, the UNCCD released several major publications highlighting the urgency of tackling land degradation, desertification and drought. The UNCCD’s financial risk assessment flagged that presently there is a $278 billion annual shortfall in funding for land restoration and drought resilience and emphasized the urgent need for private sector engagement.

The UNCCD also issued a landmark report into the growing global expansion of drylands, finding three-quarters of the Earth’s land became permanently drier over the last three decades. In addition, the rate of land degradation has rapidly increased. As a result, there are now 1.6 billion hectares of degraded land instead of 1 billion hectares in 2015. This means the convention’s flagship program, Land Degradation Neutrality, which aims to restore all degraded land by 2023, now also urgently needs a greater level of efforts as there is now half a billion more hectares to be restored. If this was to be achieved, the parties must shun their business-as-usual approach and put greater focus on land restoration, said Ibrahim Thiaw, the Executive Secretary of UNCCD.

“Land Degradation Neutrality is an ambition that was adopted in 2015 based on the science and it is still valid. If we manage to achieve it as it was conceived in 2015, that is a big step forward. Unfortunately, with more recent studies and data, we realized that we need to restore even more land by 2030 than it was envisaged in 2015. It doesn’t change or diminish the importance of the decision made in 2015. Because now we have updated science, we know that we need to restore 1.5 billion hectares of land instead of 1 billion hectares by 2030 in order to have equilibrium in the world. So basically, we have science to tell the decision-makers of the world that business as usual does not work,” Thiaw told IPS News.

The next UNCCD COP will be held in 2026 under the presidency of the Government of Mongolia. With the most ambitious of the decision—a global drought protocol—left unreached, onus is now on the UN to build a consensus among parties on a global drought agreement before they convene at COP17.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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