Stories

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.

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.

At World Water Week, a hard look at the notions that stand in the way of drought resilienceStockholm (Sweden), 2 September — Drought is on track to hitting three in four people globally by 2050. Around the world, scientists and practitioners have amassed a wealth of knowledge on what it takes to anticipate, prepare for, respond and adapt to drought. So what is standing in the way of more drought-resilient countries and communities?At an event co-convened by the International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA) at World Water Week, held in Sweden from 25 to 29 August, experts from The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and the United Nations University (UNU) discussed how to elevate drought resilience beyond borders and sectors, upending preconceived notions on drought along the way. These are the 5 myths around drought experts wish to shatter:Myth 1: Drought is a poor farmers’ problem caused by the lack of rain Drought is a natural phenomenon, but the current global emergency is human-made, the result of poor land management and unbridled consumption, leading to water stress. Droughts are also becoming harsher and faster due to human-induced climate change. And although agriculture is being impacted by drought from the Southern Cone to the Mediterranean to the Horn of Africa, the effects are felt across sectors, starting with recent cuts in hydropower production in areas like northeastern Brazil, as pointed out by UNCCD Policy Officer and drought-resilience expert Daniel Tsegai.In the past weeks, droughts have forced the authorities of three Bolivian regions to close schools two weeks earlier as drought emptied reservoirs, posing a particular challenge for menstruating students; and 700 wild animals, including hippos and elephants, are being culled in Namibia's game parks to feed people in need as southern Africa battles its worst drought in a century, even as ecotourism is an important source of income for the region.Less water also causes major disruptions in transportation of people and goods —as seen in recent years from the Yangtze river in China to the Panama Canal, the Rhine in Germany and the Mississippi in the USA—, and drought fuels sand and dust storms, leading to air pollution and respiratory infectious diseases. Also, gender inequality means that women and children are disproportionately affected by the effects of drought.“Bottom line is: the cascading impacts of drought can touch all regions and sectors, including energy production, transportation, manufacturing, tourism, education and physical and mental health,” said Tsegai. “This means we need an inclusive and all-of-government, all-of-society approach to drought.”Myth 2: Droughts are crises to be responded to “We are not planning for drought. We are not appreciating the fact that the water bankruptcy situation we are in is no longer a simple anomaly, but a reality with which we need to adapt to,” said the Director of the UNU Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), Kaveh Madani. “Our response to drought is still reactive.”Madani noted that policy-makers and citizens often have the perception of water availability when it rains, without taking into account that overall water consumption is larger than replenishment. Additionally, having some water in dam reservoirs delays the effects of hydrological drought —when river and underground water levels are dangerously low— on societies. Since the impacts are not immediately felt, decision-makers and water users tend to dismiss early warnings and fail to take action. “Drought is not a crisis, it is a risk and, as such, it can —and has to— be managed with proactive policies and investments, without waiting for drought to strike,” added Tsegai. “This is the one major change in mentality that needs to happen.”Myth 3: Climate change alone is to blame for the effects of drought“From a decision-making perspective, climate change is a blessing for some managers because they can always justify their inaction and blame every failure on global warming and the international community,” said UNU's Madani.In his opinion, leaders must stop treating the water and land sectors as mere victims of climate change and harness their mitigation potential, putting the agrifood sector, including smallholder farmers, at the forefront of the fight against climate change. “Let’s stop blaming drought on climate change and start promoting the water and land sectors as opportunity sectors, instead,” urged Madani, emphasizing the need to shift from a reactive to a proactive approach to drought management. “One thing is clear: we will not engineer our way out of droughts, which are a component of the water cycle.”  Myth 4: Gray infrastructure is the answer to droughtAccording to panelists, drought resilience depends on good policies and incentives, supported by targeted investments and a mix of low- and high-level technologies adapted to each context. Such policies must consider nature-based solutions, instead of relying solely on gray infrastructures like dams and water cisterns.A recent TNC report, for example, analyzed which parts of the world face a growing risk of drought and flooding across in the next two decades. What it found is that nature is key to reducing these risks in more than one third of those locations. “When implemented at scale and in the right places, nature-based solutions can support healthy hydrological systems that naturally store water and slowly release it in drier times, building the resilience of ecosystems and communities,” explained Kari Vigerstol, director of Water Security Science and Innovation at The Nature Conservancy.The expert also urged decision-makers to take into account both blue water —found in lakes, rivers, and reservoirs— and green water —available in the soil for plants and soil microorganisms—, as well as surface and underground water. The latter tends to be neglected and overexploited, and there are few collaborative management agreements for transboundary aquifers.Finally, she made a case for involving water users in the management of the resource at all times, not only when the impacts of drought reach societies and economies, and pointed at the importance of weather forecasting, early warning systems, and technologies to enhance water efficiency in agriculture and reuse water.Myth 5: Business can continue as usualAll countries can better prepare to coexist with drought and, according to UNCCD's Tsegai, the political momentum has never been higher. Especially, in the lead up to UNCCD COP16, the largest UN land and drought summit to date, which will take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from 2 to 13 December. At COP16, the 197 parties to the Convention will discuss, among others a global drought resilience framework, drawing on valuable inputs: the policy recommendations of the Intergovernmental Working Group (IWG) on Drought, established by the previous COP; the outcomes of the Drought Resilience+10 Conference (30 September-2 October, Geneva), focused on drought policy implementation; the insights from IDRA members and allies; and the lessons countries have learned by participating in regional and global communities of practice.The summit in Riyadh will be crucial in fostering a new drought management regime of a global nature, and securing high-level political commitment to drought resilience in the lead up to 2030 and beyond.For the UNCCD expert, the key components needed for countries to plan for drought, rather than simply respond to it, are there: the science, the economic case, the practical success examples, and the technical support.“The next step is to get the governance, financing, and implementation wheels in motion. I am hopeful that countries will rise to the challenge and use every means at their disposal in the upcoming international fora to correct, once and for all, the course of drought management,” he concluded. 

Side events organized within the sidelines of the official sessions of the Conference of the Parties (COP) and/or its subsidiary bodies convened by the UNCCD provide an informal opportunity for Parties and accredited observer organizations to exchange information and experiences on diverse issues related to the objectives of the Convention. Parties and accredited observers wishing to organize a side event during the conference are requested to apply using the following form and submitting it to: sideevent@unccd.int The application form can be downloaded from the Resources tab on this page and should be submitted by 6 September 2024. Participants are advised that the secretariat is responsible only for room allocation. Time slots and rooms will be accommodated according to availability on a first come, first serve basis. For more information, click here.

When the flow of a tropical island nation’s most important river varies by 80 per cent between the dry and wet seasons, something is amiss. In a conserved watershed, the volume of water only fluctuates by 20 per cent, pointing to the role of healthy lands in trapping and slowly releasing moisture as opposed to having water run off in a flash. Such is the predicament of the Northern Yaque river in the Dominican Republic, a mountainous Caribbean country of 10.5 million. Today, water pressure on the river is around 96 per cent, meaning that virtually all the water that the river can be counted on to carry permanently is committed to use by a growing urban population, plantations, and industries. But change, with both short- and long-term gains, is underway.For the past 15 years, dedicated partnerships convening the civil society, public, and private sectors have come up with sustainable land and water management strategies that work for everybody — smallholders, utilities providers and financiers — creating a blueprint from which others can draw inspiration.Experts working to rehabilitate the Northern Yaque watershed, which covers 14.6 per cent of the country, talked us through their process and the success factors in improving the water security of more than 1,8 million people, while building drought resilience in the face of climate change. Partnering with water users The civil society-led Plan for the Development of the Northern Yaque Watershed, or Plan Yaque, convenes 32 civil society and governmental institutions to reforest water catchment areas, train farmers in sustainable land and water management, and help communities treat wastewater before it is released into the river. In turn, Plan Yaque is a technical advisor and a key project implementer of the Northern Yaque Water Fund, a financial and governance mechanism launched in 2015 to raise and administer funds for water security in the watershed. The Fund, which is one of two such structures in the Dominican Republic, brings together 27 partners, including the Ministry of Environment, universities, and the water utility company of the country’s second largest city, Santiago. Additionally, it involves major users like manufacturing companies and banana, rice, and tobacco producer associations —crucial since agriculture accounts for an estimated 85 per cent of water consumption in the area. “The Water Fund is built on the notion that no single stakeholder can do it alone,” says executive director of the Water Fund Walkiria Estévez, who notes that the Dominican Republic is one of the most water stressed countries in the world.Ensuring financial sustainabilityPrivate sector partners contribute economically to the Fund, while each of the customers of the water utility company of Santiago contributes a small amount. The money is then invested in different portfolios and 75 per cent of the profits are used in support of nature-based solutions for water security. The rest is channeled back into the Fund to grow it. But how did the fund get the private sector on board in the first place?“We don’t speak of donations, but of investments,” says Estévez. “The private sector is investing to secure a crucial input —water— for their operations now and in the future. Ultimately, it is about having users take responsibility for managing a vital resource sustainably.”Upholding accountabilityFor Estévez, measuring results, financial accountability, and transparency have been central to gaining and maintaining the trust of partners, as has been starting with low-investment, high-impact interventions that are based on science.“We did not wait for the trust fund to reach a substantial size to start funding projects and presenting results. That was vital to prove that our model worked and to keep the momentum,” she says. However, she notes that continuing to grow the fund is important to bring successful strategies to scale and to support new ones. For example, upcoming trainings to help lowland farmers conserve soils and improve water use efficiency, which currently stands at less than 30 per cent, according to technical project coordinator Alberto Lizardo.Artificial wetland in the Dominican RepublicDeploying nature-based solutionsOne of the star interventions in the watershed are artificial wetlands, treatment systems that use natural processes involving wetland vegetation, soils, and their associated microbial diversity to improve water quality. Plan Yaque is the NGO behind the development and implementation of these low-tech, low-maintenance systems, which have proved to be a transformative solution for rural communities. They have so far built 34 of them. The wastewater from the septic tanks at homes and schools is channeled to the constructed wetland, where microorganisms, aquatic plants, and sunlight remove more than 90 per cent of the pollutants, before the water is released into the river. Water pollution is, alongside flow reduction, one of the two main issues jeopardizing water security in the basin.“The nature-based system works wonderfully and does not need inputs or maintenance, beyond removing the sewage sludge every three months, which communities do themselves” says founder and executive director of Plan Yaque Humberto Checo, one of the leading figures in the watershed restoration and management movement in the country. Working in micro-watershedsFor Checo, from Plan Yaque, a key to their success is focusing each intervention in selected territories drained by streams, or micro-watersheds, 52 tesserae that collectively make up the river Yaque basin. The NGO conducted a diagnosis of the 19 micro-watersheds in the upper basin and prioritized those with both high-water production and imminent threat from the expansion of the agricultural frontier, which leads to deforestation and the loss of the natural systems that maintain an adequate water flow. Then, they identified key farms or producer associations and set out to demonstrate why shifting from slash-and-burn agriculture to self-sustaining forestry and agroforestry systems was in their best interest.Changing mindsets “Changing mindsets to transform land management one family at a time is the most important part of the whole strategy, and our most important learning,” says Checo.Short cycle crops like corn, sweet potatoes, and yuca mean that farmers must toil incessantly into their old age to make a living, he says, whereas planting macadamia nut trees, orchards, and even coffee ensures a good source of future income with minimal effort while regenerating the soil and protecting water catchment areas. Land use planning across the farm is part of the approach.Parched, denuded hills of the farmers who continued with business as usual 15 years ago now stand next to the stunningly verdant slopes of those who opted to shift to more sustainable agricultural practices, reviving the landscape and building economic security for present and future generations along the way. These type of efforts largely account for the rise of the Dominican Republic as a global land restoration hotspot.“Sustainability lies in this newly gained awareness of the need to care, together, for the natural systems that sustain us,” says Estévez of the Water Fund. This is what we ultimately strive for.”Bringing what works to scalePlan Yaque has also pioneered a payment for ecosystem services scheme (PES) with support from hydropower and water providers, and the country recently passed its first law on PES. The next challenge, says Checo, is bringing this and other internationally lauded, science-based initiatives to micro-watersheds across the country.“After decades of experience in watershed restoration and protection, we have evidence on what works,” says Checo. “With the right policies and investments, we could bring this expertise to scale while supporting the next generation of landscape professionals.”