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Big pledges at COP16 in KSA: The Islamic Development Bank and the Opec Fund for International Development have each pledged USD 1 bn to the newly launched Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership to support drought-hit countries at the COP16 UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) summit in Riyadh, according to media reports here and here. Saudi Arabia has pledged USD 150 mn over the next 10 years, Saudi Minister of Environment, Water and Agriculture and COP16 President Abdulrahman Abdulmohsen Al-Fadhley said on the sidelines of the summit.
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Let’s back up a bit: UNCCD is less well-known than its counterparts on climate change and biodiversity, which were also conceived during the 1992 Rio Earth Summit with the signing of UNCCD (pdf), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
What’s the goal? COP16 hopes to mobilize action and investment for land restoration and drought resilience, with planned discussions of issues including land and drought resilience, sustainable farming practices, crop resilience, land governance, and scientific and tech-based solutions to the crisis of desertification. You can find the full agenda here (pdf).
SOUND SMART- Desertification is a human activities-linked land degradation process in which vegetation in drylands decreases and eventually disappears. The phenomenon specifically references non-desert ecosystems losing vegetation and becoming desert-like rather than the expansion of existing deserts. It can be caused by deforestation, overexploitation of natural resources like water, soil, and vegetation, and harmful agricultural practices. Extreme weather patterns, which are exacerbated by human activity, also contribute to the problem through increased droughts, hurricanes, and fires.
Financing will be in the spotlight: To meet the summit’s targets, an estimated USD 355 bn is needed annually between 2025 and 2030 — or a total cumulative investment of at least USD 2.1 bn, according to a financial needs assessment (FNA) (pdf) commissioned by COP15. However, this figure is far below the current investments, which grew from USD 37 bn in 2016 to USD 66 bn by 2022. 72% of these investments came from domestic sources, while 22% came from bilateral and multilateral sources, and only 6% came from the private sector. Under current projections, investments would grow to only USD 77 bn between 2025 and 2030, leaving a USD 278 mn funding gap. The assessment covered 139 countries out of the 196 member nations of the UNCCD.
Africa is in most need: Africa is facing the largest funding gap of USD 191 bn per year, having made ambitious land restoration commitments such as pledging to restore over 600 mn hectares of land. Africa also had a larger number of countries assessed in the FNA.
Have previous summits been fruitful? Up until now, UNCCD is the only convention from Rio’s climate triplet treaties that has not established a solid set of well-defined action and finance targets. For example, a key goal of the UNCCD is working to achieve Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN), yet concrete action and timeline are lacking. But at COP15 in Abidjan, 38 the countries agreed to commit to ramping up efforts to restore one bn hectares of degraded land by 2030.
SOUND SMART- What is LDN? LDN aims to reverse land degradation by maintaining existing healthy land, reducing existing degradation through sustainable practices, and restoring degraded land.
Why is all this critical? Over 24 bn tons of fertile soil disappear yearly, according to the UN, and about two-thirds of the Earth is already experiencing desertification. At the moment, almost 15 mn sq km of land is already degraded, which is an area the size of Antarctica, The Guardian reports. If not mitigated, the world could lose 1.5 mn sq km of agricultural land — an area the size of India’s arable land — by 2050, according to Iberdrola. The area of degraded land is set to expand at the rate of 1m sqkm per year, the news outlet added.
The economic costs are immense: The challenges of land degradation, desertification, and drought cost the global economy an estimated loss of USD 10 tn annually, according to the UN.
That’s not all: Land ecosystems typically absorbed almost a third of human-induced carbon dioxide pollution until recently, but due to deforestation and climate change, that capacity has shrunk by 20%, according to a report (pdf) by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. The drop in absorption is mainly due to unsustainable agricultural practices, which is alone responsible for about 80% of forest loss. If this trend is not reversed in time, land could become a net source of emissions, the report warns.
MENA is one of the regions vulnerable to desertification trends: MENA is especially vulnerable to climate change, and particularly to desertification and aridity due to severe water shortages and frequent sandstorms, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In turn, food insecurity is expected to increase through lower rainfall, higher temperatures, shorter growing periods, drier soil and decreased crop yields, and reduced drinking water for livestock. MENA is the most water-stressed region in the world and is home to 12 of the world’s 17 most water-stressed countries, ABC reported, citing World Bank data. Water scarcity is expected to cost MENA countries 6-14% of their GDP by 2050.
