The International Drought Resilience Observatory will launch at UNCCD COP16

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 agenda

Drought 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.