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Madame Minister, Marina da Silva,Ladies and gentlemen,Bom dia!I have indelible memories of my visit to Brazil last June, when Minister Marina Silva invited me to visit the Caatinga region with her. It was instructive for me to discover the extent of land degradation and drought in a country mostly known for its lush forests and vast rivers. It was news to me that the arid and semi-arid zones of Brazil cover 1.4 million km2 and that 59 per cent of the territory is affected by drought, 1/3 of which by extreme drought! How to feed these people? How to supply them with clean water and reliable energy? How, in these conditions, can we promote industrialization, create jobs and ensure human well-being? Brazil’s case is just an example of how land degradation and drought are having serious impacts in the world. Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen, We are living in a paradoxical bubble. While in theory the world has never accumulated so much wealth, there have never been such striking disparities and inequalities, so many displaced populations, so much forced migration. The number of people without jobs or secure livelihoods is rising inexorably in many parts of the world. While certain countries in the world are reservoirs of mineral resources and agricultural commodities, forest and fishery products, some of these same countries are experiencing the most appalling poverty. This calls for a rethinking of our economic models. For far too long, we have adopted policies of extraction, exportation of raw material, processing abroad, re-exporting, using and discarding. This type of linear extractive economy, whether agricultural or mining, often leads to inequality, resentment and dissension. Perpetuating this model in this 21st century is ruinous and counterproductive. It is obsolete and needs to be reviewed. Given the current level of degradation of our land (up to 40 per cent of fertile land is already degraded), and in view of the trends towards 2050, we have little choice but to review our policies and practices. And the G20 Environmental meetings is the place to start rethinking, perhaps with the South African Presidency. Challengingly, we must produce at least 50 per cent more food, while leaving a smaller footprint on the planet. Producing more nutritious food with less: less land, less water, less pollution. Not an easy equation, but not impossible to solve. One of the most accessible, sustainable and natural solutions is large-scale restoration of degraded land. In addition to the fertile land already in use, we have a reservoir of 1.5 billion hectares of degraded land which can be rehabilitated, cared for and put back into production. The investment required is relatively modest in view of the return on investment and economic income, estimated at between 7 to 30 times the original investment.Beyond economics, bringing degraded land back to health provides multiple other solutions: Restoring degraded land is often the best way of combating forced migration, recognizing that people have no choice but to flee when they cannot provide food and dignity to their families. The correlations between forced migration and arid lands has been established…Restoring degraded land therefore fights against poverty (think of those who have no other asset than their ancestral land); Investing in land restoration can also reduce conflicts and insecurity, particularly conflicts over access to fertile land and scarce water. Land and Water are often the (neglected) root causes or the (poorly understood) triggers of conflicts. Finally, land restoration meets climate change ambitions (both mitigation and adaptation), biodiversity (target 2 of the Global Biodiversity Framework) and, of course, the fight against land degradation (Land Degradation Neutrality), i.e. the ambitions of the so-called Rio Conventions. It is encouraging that the G20 established in 2020 a Global Land Restoration Initiative aiming at halving degraded lands in the world by 2040. The implementation of such a visionary initiative is however timid and needs to be boosted throughout the entire G20 block and beyond. Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen Now let me turn to drought. An issue which affects us all – rich and poor. Right here in Latin America, we are currently witnessing the lowest water levels on record in many of the rivers in the Amazon basin – and this follows the most severe drought faced in 45 years. Across the world, droughts are occurring more frequently and more severely – up by one third since 2000. An estimated 3 in 4 people worldwide will be affected by drought by 2050. And sadly, droughts never come alone: wildfires, food insecurity, economic downturn, disruption of energy generation, and even disruption of supply chains as we recently witnessed in the Panama Canal. It is incredible to witness the burning of the Amazon rainforest as well as the Pantanal, reported as the world’s largest wetland. Before I conclude, allow me to extend a special invitation to all of you to join us at UNCCD COP16, taking place from December 2nd to 13th, 2024, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. You laready heard from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, our wonderful host who spares no effort to make this COP a turning point in the life of the Convention. In Riyadh, Leaders, Ministers, Entrepreneurs, Indigenous People, Women and Youth will each have a chance to engage in shaping future policies and accelerating action on land restoration and drought resilience. Together with our hosts, we look forward to continuing these important conversations on a global stage.

In the past decade, experts have produced a wealth of data, indicators and metrics on drought. But the breadth and complexity of this information and the fact that it is scattered, means it can be hard for busy decision-makers to use it in their efforts to build drought resilience on the ground. Meanwhile, there is a growing urgency to turn science and data into policies and policies into action, as droughts are projected to touch three in four people globally by 2050 due to the combined effects of climate change and land degradation.Enter the International Drought Resilience Observatory (IDRO), the first global, AI-powered data platform for proactive drought management and an initiative of the International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA). The Observatory will provide a single portal where managers can easily analyse and visualise key social and environmental drought resilience indicators — and use them to make practical decisions.At the Drought Resilience +10 Conference, held in Geneva from 30 September to 2 October, IDRA and several of its allies announced that work is underway to develop the Observatory, whose prototype will be unveiled at the UNCCD COP16 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in December.The event was championed by Saudi Arabia and Spain, an IDRA-co-chair together with Senegal. It also featured global drought experts; the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which hosts the IDRA Secretariat; and the Yale Center for Ecosystems + Architecture (Yale CEA), which is developing the digital platform.Packaging data for action“There is tremendous knowledge on drought and drought resilience out there,” said founding director of Yale CEA Anna Dyson. “With the Observatory, we want to get the right information, to the right people, at the right time, distilling and connecting data from existing platforms while filling critical gaps in risk and vulnerability assessment.”The Observatory will rely on different sources: the users themselves, who can input data from their own countries; global datasets like the European Union’s Earth Observation programme, known as Copernicus; and outputs from remote-sensing tools, which will be particularly helpful for data-poor territories that still need to make decisions based on science to build their resilience to drought. “The Sahel, where I come from, is very data scarce, but that can’t stop us from thinking about how to enhance our resilience to drought in the face of climate change,” said Fadji Maina, associate research scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. “The information captured by satellites will be particularly helpful for regions like ours.”Decision-makers at all levels will be able to curate their own IDRO dashboard depending on their interests and needs; conduct AI-powered searches to find data and answers; and explore the impact of different variables on societies and ecosystems. Immersive, interactive visualizations will also allow them to experience and compare what different scenarios would look like on the ground.Ultimately, IDRO will allow users to understand how well they are doing in terms of preparing their societies and ecosystems for future droughts, what they can improve and how best to target their investments at the national and subnational level as part of a whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach.For the executive director of the Africa Group II at the World Bank, Abdoul Bello, the Observatory will be a welcome tool for countries in his constituency, which include some of the most vulnerable to desertification and drought globally, like Niger, Chad, Mali and Burkina Fasso.“IDRO speaks to our new vision to eradicate extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity in a livable planet; and drought resilience is critical to realize this vision,” said Bello. Additionally, the World Bank will act as interim host of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage adopted by parties to the UN Convention to Combat Climate Change (UNFCCC), which Bello sees as an opportunity to increase funding for the drought resilience and land restoration agenda.The session also counted on top experts from the global drought community who are contributing to the development of IDRO, like director of the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Mark Svoboda; director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health Kaveh Madani and senior scientist at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre Andrea Toreti.Drought in the global agendaDrought resilience will continue rising to the top of the global agenda in 2024, a year that will see the summits of the three Rio conventions (Biodiversity, Climate, Desertification) take place from October to December in Colombia, Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia.“We must make the most of the current momentum to launch tools like IDRO, which has great potential to enhance proactive and integrated drought management at all levels, bridging science and data with policies and action,” said Clara Cabrera Brasero, deputy ambassador at the Permanent Mission of Spain to the UN in Geneva.At UNCCD COP16, world leaders are expected to adopt a landmark decision on drought resilience, creating a Paris-Agreement moment for land and drought.  “Together, we can develop a comprehensive framework to enhance drought resilience across borders,” said Ayman Ghulam, chief executive officer at the National Center of Meteorology of Saudi Arabia and UNCCD COP16 president, who noted that IDRA is one of the key partners of the summit.For deputy executive secretary of UNCCD Andrea Meza, COP16 will be a unique opportunity to raise awareness on the intricate links between drought, land and climate; share tools and knowledge; and chart concrete strategies to prepare communities, countries and regions for future droughts.Meza encouraged all stakeholders to register for the Riyadh summit — world leaders, civil society organizations, the private sector, journalists,  experts and managers — and bring best practices, ideas and tools.“We need political will and we also need science. IDRO will bring together key data, facilitate its visualization and make it accessible for decision-makers to accelerate national and local investments for drought resilience,” said Meza.

In just two months, global attention will focus on land and drought resilience as the 16th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) takes place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from 2 to 13 December 2024.

Excellencies,Ladies and Gentlemen,It is a great honor to be with you today. I would like to thank the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for organizing this event and for hosting the 16th session of the UNCCD Conference of the Parties. This event today will pave the way for the biggest and most significant UNCCD Conference of the Parties we have ever had over the past 30 years.COP16 in Riyadh will be the largest UN land and drought conference to date, and the first UNCCD COP held in the Middle East and North Africa region, which knows first-hand the impacts of desertification, land degradation and drought, and now floods.Riyadh 2024 is expected to be a turning point, a game-changer for the global drought resilience agenda.For long, people thought that land degradation and drought are local issues, to be left to those governments that are directly affected and need to address themselves. For long, desertification has been perceived as an issue for one region or two to address. Today, we know, thanks to science, that our world is totally interconnected. Scarcity of fertile land and water threaten our global security, affect our economy, our food security and amplify forced migration. Land use is the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and land degradation leads to further loss of biodiversity and livelihoods for the poor whose only asset sometimes is land. Each year, sand and dust storms lift up to two billion tons of aerosols to the atmosphere, causing serious air pollution, leading to diseases and economic loss. So, land degradation and drought may happen locally, but they are not local issues. The food we eat, the coffee or the tea we enjoyed this morning, the clothes we wear and part of the air we breathe are all coming from the land. Often, from thousands of miles from where we live.Drought and land degradation stand therefore as a major global challenge impacting food security, ecosystems, production, human health, jobs, and access to water, often leading to famine, conflicts and mass migration. I like to say that land is the only GDP of the poor. Let us make it clear: land degradation is a serious issue but there is a silver lining. The good news is that we can halt and reverse land loss. Indeed, land restoration provides us with multiple solutions: solutions to climate, biodiversity, security and economic stability. Large-scale land restoration is perfectly achievable. Bringing degraded land back to health is not only feasible, but it is economically and socially viable. So, in Riyadh, economists will meet with business people, agronomists with investors, civil society organizations with government leaders, youth with women’s group, scientists with policy makers. In Riyadh, Parties are expected to agree on how to tackle the critical issue of drought. After many years of discussions and negotiations, it is time to close the loop and move on to implementation. The most vulnerable communities expect concrete results and bold decisions on drought. In Riyadh, Parties are also expected to move from pledges to concrete implementation on land restoration. It does not suffice to express intentions, or to make big announcements. Our youth, our farmers, our women’s groups all expect to see more concrete action on land restoration. Finally, COP16 will help us understand that land loss and water scarcity have a human face. Together, we will tackle these most complex issues. Together, we will win the battle. Together, we will sail to a safer destination. 

What is at stake at the most important global meeting on drought of the past decade26 September 2024 — Droughts are risks to be managed, rather than crises to be responded to with little or no planning. In the past decade, more than 70 countries around the world have developed national drought policies to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to harsher and more frequent droughts — a departure from the traditional reactive approach that was commonplace before the first High-Level Meeting on National Drought Policy in 2013. As drought is projected to touch three out of four people globally by 2050, decision-makers and experts will reconvene in Geneva from 30 September to 2 October with a twin goal: taking stock of the progress made in the past ten years and transforming plans, policies and commitments into concrete actions that protect societies, economies and ecosystems from the impacts of drought. The Drought Resilience +10 (DR+10) Conference will result in a series of recommendations for decision-makers and managers. Crucially, its final declaration will inform the global drought community and the negotiations at the most ambitious land and drought summit in United Nations history, or UNCCD COP16, which will take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from 2 to 13 December.Progress across the following issues will be at the heart of discussions to take global drought resilience to the next level:A global drought resilience mechanismGlobal drought governance is fragmented. A new global mechanism for drought resilience would align goals and investments across development agencies, development banks and international instruments like the Paris Agreement, the Global Biodiversity Framework, and Land Degradation Neutrality efforts.The mechanism would also facilitate coordination and coherence across governance levels, sectors and funding flows, ensuring that policies, practices and incentives are aligned from the international to the local level. The proposal will be discussed at DR+10 and raised with world leaders at UNCCD COP16 to usher in a new era of drought resilience.A systemic approach to droughtDroughts have become 29 per cent more frequent since the year 2000 due to the combined effects of human-driven land degradation and climate change, and they are one of the world’s most deadly and costly nature-based hazards. Droughts impact agriculture and food security, but also health, energy production, transportation and the services that vibrant ecosystems provide to humanity. Additionally, they can trigger a string of hazards: flooding is made worse by dry, compacted ground; the loss of land cover can lead to sand and dust storms; and the degradation of watershed ecosystems can compromise water security in urban centres. Droughts cut across all sectors and governance levels and, as such, call for an all-of-government, all-of-society approach — an approach that must be rooted in sustainable land management, make the most of nature-based solutions and account for the cascading and compounding effects of drought. DR+10 looks to create the momentum for a truly systemic, inclusive and science- based approach to drought risk management. Droughts are a risk, but with the right actions, they needn't be a disaster.Funding and partnerships for actionIn the past decade, only five per cent of official development assistance for disasters was allocated to preparedness, although evidence shows that building drought resilience is up to ten times more cost-effective than waiting for crises to happen.That is an example of the disconnect between what we know needs to be done — fund drought resilience — and what is too often happening in practice — waiting for droughts to strike, then launching costly emergency responses as lives, livelihoods and assets are lost.So how can the financial allocations for proactive and emergency measures be rebalanced? What role should the private sector play in protecting the watersheds their water-intensive businesses depend on? And how could governments better attract financial resources and forge partnerships for drought resilience? These are some of the questions DR+10 will address with a view to closing the drought finance gap and encouraging meaningful partnerships between public, private and civil society actors. Geneva to RiyadhThe UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which is turning 30 this year, is the only legally binding instrument that addresses land degradation and drought at the global level, recognizing that we are only as resilient to drought as our land is.The outcomes and recommendations of DR+10 on the issues above will be presented to world leaders at UNCCD COP16 in December and inform high-level negotiations on potential global drought resilience mechanisms. The march from Geneva to Riyadh, and from policies to action, is on.Learn more about the nine DR+10 workstreamsRegister onlineCheck out the programmeFor media:Media registrationFor interviews with UNCCD representatives contact: gpallares@unccd.int

The world’s population is on track to reaching 10 billion by 2050, just as the planetary systems that sustain life on Earth are being pushed to their limits — and with them, our ability to provide food and water and to prevent large-scale displacements, rippling economic shocks and conflict.