Despite the two weeks of UN.-sponsored in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, the 197 participating nations failed to agree early Saturday on a plan to deal with global droughts, made longer and more severe by a warming climate
The biennial talks, known as COP 16 and organized by a United Nations body dealing with the fight against desertification and droughts, sought to create strong global mandates to legally bind and oblige nations to finance systems of ‘early warning and building resilient infrastructure in the poorest countries, especially in Africa. which is most affected by the changes.
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification is published a report Earlier this week, warning that if global warming trends continue, nearly five billion people — including most of Europe, parts of the western US, Brazil, Asia eastern and central Africa—will be affected by the drying of the Earth’s lands by the end of the century, more than a quarter of the world’s current population. The report also said agriculture was particularly at risk, potentially leading to food insecurity for communities around the world.
This is the fourth time that UN talks aimed at getting countries to agree to make more progress in the fight against biodiversity loss, climate change and plastic pollution have failed to reach a consensus or have produced disappointing results this year, worrying many nations, especially the most vulnerable.
Nations participating in the Riyadh discussions decided to push the can to the 2026 talks, hosted by Mongolia.
“Parties need more time to agree on how best to address the critical problem of drought,” said Ibrahim Thiaw, the head of the UNCCD, speaking at the end of the Riyadh talks.
Thiaw said the conference was “like no other” in the 30-year history of the talks. “We have elevated the land and drought agenda beyond sectoral discussions, establishing it as a cornerstone of global efforts to address interconnected challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, food insecurity, migration and global security”.
Longer solutions to the drought, such as curbing climate change, were not a topic of conversation.
Host Saudi Arabia has been criticized in the past for stalling progress on reducing fossil fuel emissions in other negotiations. The Gulf nation is one of the world’s largest oil producers and exporters with the world’s second largest oil reserves.
Earlier in the conference, Saudi Arabia, several other countries and international banks pledged $2.15 billion for drought resilience. And the Arab Coordination Group, made up of 10 Middle East-based development banks, pledged $10 billion by 2030 to tackle land degradation, desertification and drought. The funds are expected to support 80 of the most vulnerable countries to prepare for worsening drought conditions.
But the UN estimates that between 2007 and 2017, droughts will cost $125 billion worldwide.
Erika Gomez, Panama’s chief negotiator, said that while no decision had been made to address the drought, significant progress had been made on other key issues.
“We have achieved several key milestones, especially in the growing traction of civil society participation and gender decision-making,” said Gómez. “Until the end, the parties could not agree on whether the new instrument to respond to the drought should be legally binding or not,” said Jes Weigelt of the European climate think tank TMG Research, which has been monitoring the conversations.
“I fear that UNCCD COP 16 has suffered the same fate as the biodiversity and climate COPs this year. It failed,” he said.