Your guide to the Drought Resilience +10 conference

What is at stake at the most important global meeting on drought of the past decade

26 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 mechanism

Global 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 drought

Droughts 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 action

In 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 Riyadh

The 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 workstreams
• Register online
• Check out the programme

For media:

• Media registration
• For interviews with UNCCD representatives contact: gpallares [at] unccd.int (gpallares[at]unccd[dot]int)