In recent yeas, water scarcity and drought have been seriously affecting the Northern Mediterranean and Central and Eastern Europe, with major impacts on the economy and welfare of people. To address the growing concern over the negative impacts of water scarcity, national focal points, country representatives and scientists gathered for an online Drought Dialogue on 13 July 2022. Representatives of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the dialogue to discuss the development of national drought plans and facilitate the exchange of effective approaches to drought preparedness and drought impact monitoring. Following the UNCCD COP mandate, the secretariat of the convention and the Global Mechanism are implementing a Drought Initiative, with the input from the Science-Policy Interface. The initiative aims to support UNCCD country Parties in their efforts to establish effective national drought action plans and improve the resilience of ecosystem and people to drought. To date, more than 70 countries are engaged in the process of designing national plans of action, including five countries from Central and Eastern Europe. Contributing to these efforts, the outcomes of the Drought Dialogue will support the production of a technical brief that will aim to address the gaps and needs of the region to building drought resilience with available knowledge and solutions. It will also include a number of case studies, initiatives and good practices on drought risk mitigation from a broad range of stakeholders: governmental, non-governmental, private sector, civil society and international organizations. The technical brief will follow the path laid out by the recent Global Land Outlook 2 Central and Eastern Europe thematic report “Ecosystem restoration for green recovery and a sustainable future,” which offers a comprehensive analysis of commitments under international and national initiatives promoting land and ecosystem restoration to address the impacts of drought.

Dear representatives of the UNCCD-accredited CSOs,   In the decision 5/COP.15, Parties requested that the Executive Secretary “facilitate the renewal of the membership of the Civil Society Organization Panel until the next Conference of the Parties, starting immediately after that fifteenth session of the Conference of the Parties, in accordance with previous decisions.”   Following this request, the secretariat would like to share the attached call for nominations and the information related to the elections. Organizations wishing to nominate representatives to serve as panel members will need to submit the documents stated in section 1 paragraph d of the attached document. The deadline for the submission of candidates is 17 July 2022. Once the candidates have been reviewed and accepted, the election process will be open from 21 July to 4 August 2022. Please share this information with your networks and nominate the best candidate to represent your organization for the next two years. Only organizations accredited to the Conference of the Parties to the UNCCD are eligible to nominate candidates.   Please do not hesitate to contact us in case you need any additional information. You can also contact the current CSO panel at csopanel [at] unccd.int. We look forward to receiving your nominations.