Media Briefing on Drought - Press Conference, UNCCD COP17

So good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for being here. Sorry for this delay. You know, the authorities have a very tight schedule. I am Gloria Palares from the UNCCD communications team, and I will be facilitating the conversation today. We are here because, as you know, droughts have increased by 30% since the year 2000, and three in four people could be affected by 2050. Today we will look at how countries can better anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to drought, and what are some of the tools, the partnerships, and the financing mechanisms that can help countries move from plans and commitments to implementation. So we are joined today by Andrea Meza, the Deputy Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, by Her Excellency Manhai Mende Bayar, Chairwoman of the Standing Committee on Environment and Agriculture of the Parliament of Mongolia. And shortly we will be joined by His Excellency Dr. Osama Ibrahim Faqih, who is Deputy Minister of Environment of Saudi Arabia and who has been advisor to the COP16 presidency. The word is over to you, Andrea.

Thank you, Gloria, and good afternoon, colleagues, and good afternoon, Excellency. It's really a pleasure to have you here with us. As you know, colleagues, we're in the middle of the negotiation process as well and all the agendas we are just adjusting and moving from one room to the other. But I think it was very important to come and share with you some reflections, right? A big part of the agenda of UNCCD is about drought, drought resilience and why this is important and I think that we really need to understand that we're not talking about an environmental issue actually with drought and we're really talking about a structural risk to our economies, to our productivity systems, to our ecosystems, to our livelihoods. So it's really one of the global phenomenons that is having multiple effects in different areas. And the stories are coming from around the world clearly. We're seeing that in some cases in Africa, actually, we're also linking this to famine situations. And then we're talking about the lives of thousands of people affected by drought. We're talking in other contexts right now that are not so used to facing a lot of these droughts. And in the morning, we were in a meeting with the minister of Brazil. And he was saying, even in the Amazon, a place where we always connect with tropical forests with a lot of rain, we're seeing the effects of drought. We go to the Panama Canal and we're seeing that then the disruption that this is causing to the international commerce because the ships cannot go through. You see it and start talking to the farmers in Europe and they're losing millions and millions of dollars or having losses under harvest and not able to produce different commodities. And we're seeing these disruptions in different sectors. So at the end, we're talking about a very structural risk to our communities, to our value chains, to our livelihoods. And this is why the issue and what we are hearing from science is that we will be having more frequent and intense droughts. This is the reality. So in front of that, what we cannot, continue accepting, I will say, is decision makers that don't take this seriously because it's there. We know it's coming, it's going to be harder, it's going to be hitting us, and we cannot say that we don't have the knowledge, the scientific information, and continue to be business as usual. So this is why it's also very important that the countries, the communities, the companies move into this proactive drought management. And this proactive drought management requires access to information. And it's very important that as a global community, we continue investing in early warning systems. We need to know when the droughts are coming. But then it's not only about generating this information, it's what do we do with this information? How do we transfer this information to the farmers? How do we transfer this information to the water utilities? How do we transfer this information to the communities that will be facing this challenge? And this is where this proactive drought management system requires a good framework in terms of good governance, a good system in place of policies. Countries needs to have their drought plans, their drought policies. They need to know which sectors will be more affected in advance and they need to start investing in being more resilient. And there is a lot of technologies to do so. But of course, it sounds from from an intellectual and technical perspective, sometimes something simple and we know it's not simple. So many countries, and this is why what we are negotiating right now in a lot of these rooms becomes very important for many countries to have clear guidance from the COP as a COP decision that defines which are the elements, what are the next steps. reinforce what they can do at the national level. We also need to be mobilizing financial resources at the scale that it is needed. And this is where some of the initiatives like the REA Global Drought Resilience Partnership to mobilize resources for the most vulnerable countries or the Drought Investment Facility to try to bring private capital become very much needed. And still we know that those funds or the Jeff allocation in the nine, in the new replenishment Jeff nine, that it is also opening new windows and recognizing that we need to invest more in this proactive drought management. But it is also about understanding and always having the right information that could be very complex and how do we Transform that complex information into more accessible data for the decision makers. And this is where instruments like the international drug receiving observatory play a critical role at the end. What we were saying, we need to know in advance that the trials are coming, but then we also need to understand if the actions that we're implemented. are generating more resilience. And to measure that, we need this kind of instruments that will facilitate and will make the economic case for these investments. So I think that in a nutshell, I will say, Gloria, this is why the negotiation on drought is so important. We are giving what comes out from a COP gives signals to the market, gives signals to the countries at the national level. But then it's not only about having that, we also need the tools and the financial resources, tools like the the one that the different experts and countries and partners are developing through the observatory, the International Drug Resilience Observatory, continue working in bringing more political traction. And I think that the work that the International Drug Resilience Alliance, IDRA, is doing in elevating the profile of the agenda is critical. And then of course, the financial resources. And with all these different pieces, it will be, we hope, transition to be adopting these practices in agriculture, in water management, in infrastructure, in the way that we're building our cities, in the way that we're building our landscapes. And of course, always understanding that drought is not only the absence of rain, right? In many cases, we're talking about actually good land and soil management as a critical piece to be understanding and be better prepared for the next drought. Thank.

You. Thank you very much, Andrea. So exceptionally because Deputy Executive Secretary has to leave earlier than expected, we will briefly open the floor to questions for her and then we will continue with our Member of Parliament. Thank you. So the floor is to you. Please mention your name, the media outlet. Thank you. Okay, so we'll start with El Pais, then Premium Times, then Don Torit. Thank you.

Hi, hello. This is Angeles Lucas from the Spanish newspaper El Pais. Well, you have said that you cannot accept that the politicians don't take it seriously, the drought. What would you say also to the private sector?

Thank you, Angeles.

The same as a CEO. And we're hearing companies right now very concerned and understanding that this is about risk management for companies, right? In many cases, the CEOs will understand, okay, is this action will generate new revenues or is it about risk management? And they understand this very clearly because they're seeing the disruptions in many cases. in their production systems, in their value chains. We're talking and we're hearing from companies that they're very concerned because, of course, if they are a big agribusiness company, they're then having lack or they don't have access to their commodities to produce the things that they need. And these at the end, there it has an impact, of course, in the potential revenue and in its increasing losses in many cases. So as well, I think that as we say that no country is immune to drought, we can say that no economic sector is immune to drought. And the invitation and we're seeing as well from the private sector, what are the kind of measures they need to put in place in their operations to be better prepared to manage. On the other side, they can play a critical role and we're seeing this in generating technologies and innovations that can be part of the solution. And we are seeing this as well on precision agriculture as a very effective new technologies to consume less water, to use, reuse water. I mean, there is big areas that are potentially new businesses for them, and this is attractive. This crisis can generate opportunities as well for some sectors. or in other cases resistant crops. I mean, there is a lot of innovation as well that it is there and that can generate potential new businesses due to this crisis. But it's not only about this new potential new services or commodities or technologies that can be developed, but it is also about their operations and the way that they need to be including this as a structural risk and how they will be considering this in the future.

Thank you so much, Your Excellency. My name is Abdul Karim Mojitt. I'm a journalist working with Premium Times from Nigeria. I really love the fact you mentioned, you talked about early warning systems as well as the indigenous people. As you know, many of them are usually some of the first hits when it comes to droughts as some of them depend on their farmlands for them to sustain their livelihoods. But earlier today we saw them making gestures like they are not being considered on the table, in the table of negotiations and all other strip. When they are exempted, apparently they won't also be aware of some of these early warning system technologies, steps to follow and all of that in order to build resilience against drought that you mentioned. Are there steps being taken to ensure that your voice are also captured as the process proceeds? Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for this important question. Clearly, now more than ever, we really need to make sure that the different platforms to guarantee the voices that we have, the voices of local communities and of the indigenous people, We need to have them and to be put in place. And this is why what happened in Riyadh with the creation of the 2 indigenous peoples and the local community caucuses was a landmark decision because it was to that to guarantee that we can have the voices of these. stakeholders and where they can bring their knowledge, their traditional knowledge, their solutions, but also their needs. Of course, what we need is also understanding very clearly that their needs, this needs to happen and to be operationalized. As you know, we are facing right now a situation with the block of one agenda item that it is generating certain uncertainty in how the progress that we are doing in putting in place the caucuses, how this will be impacted, but negotiations are still going on. What we are seeing is that for many, many countries, it's still very important to guarantee these spaces, but this is in the formal process. I think that due to this complex geopolitical situations that we're facing for multilateralism, now more than ever coalitions of the wheel, alliances of different stakeholders that want to work together towards the same aim and in this case to build drug resilience become more important. And for example, inside the International Drug Resilience Alliance, IDRA, this issue of having countries, NGOs, those, you know, a more diverse composition for that to guarantee that the indigenous peoples and the local communities can really be there in the table, discuss possible solutions and try to be part of the different technologies and solutions that are developed are so important. And I think that this is the message, no matter what happened in the negotiation, we need to continue Mobilizing recourse resources to the to those communities facilitating access to to knowledge to information. And again, the intention of having the international drug residents observatory, for example, to to have a friendly instrument that any. person in whatever part of the world can have access to and can be learning and also sharing their knowledge, their information there. This is why we think it becomes a more important and critical tool.

Hi, I am Shagun from Down to Earth magazine in India. Thank you for the information you shared. Uh, my question is about the drought framework that is pending and, uh, COP16 also tried to negotiate that balance, uh, you talked about, uh, how critical negotiations and this framework are. But there are some parties that have taken a stand that they are not going to accept any kind of instrument, whether binding or voluntary. And there is also disagreement now between parties that whether drought should be addressed as a regional or a local issue or a global issue. Do you see this as going back on the established UN text which recognizes drought as an important global issue and it should be addressed globally? And if there is no consensus reached here, what are the processes available to the secretariat and the presidency so that it doesn't get pushed to COP18 again? Thank you.

Thank you. Yes, we're in the middle of the negotiation and what we're seeing is different positions. You really mentioned it well. We're hearing some positions that are saying this should be addressed as a local event and And we're just here to share certain experience, but this is more an issue that needs to be addressed at the national level. But this is not the position of most of the parties, right? Most of the parties are recognizing that this is a global challenge and it should required and bring global solutions. And I think that the beauty of multilateralism is that we can negotiate and we can have different views. This is why we have become, maybe we will not agree, but I'm hopeful that in this COP we will get an agreement because I feel and I think that most of the countries this year with El Super El Nino, they're facing a lot of challenges right now and they cannot go back to their citizens, to their constituencies and say, nothing is coming out as a negotiated outcome from this. So yes, there are some positions in that way, as there are some positions that are saying that climate change doesn't exist and there are some positions, you know, different positions, but this is not the majority. I think the most countries in the world are saying We recognize this is a challenge, a structural risk that would have multiple effects in the economy, in the health, you name the sector. And this is generating, I will say, very good conditions as well to find solutions. I think that this is very important. But as I was saying, More than just what happened in the negotiation is just one of the pieces. We also need the action agenda and everything that happens around how the stakeholders organize themselves, come together under alliances. The Idris one of the alliances that are different programs and it's about bringing this momentum to this, this should be a priority in the agenda of decision makers and also facilitating cooperation and collaboration. And now more than ever, these coalitions of the will are playing critical role.

Thank you very much, Andrea. We will let you go. We have heard from Andrea the importance of addressing drought risk before it becomes a drought crisis, the importance of international cooperation around something that is systemic and affects everything from transportation to health to food prices. Thank you. And now we welcome our speaker, Manhai Minbayar, who is again the chairwoman of the Standing Committee of the Environment and Agricultural Parliament of Mongolia. Journalists here have wondered what the experience of Mongolia is with managing very severe droughts and managing land sustainably. So over to you.

Hello, so you can hear me. Well, drought is not new for Mongolia. It's been a part of our history. It's been also a part of our herding civilization. So I was just looking at these numbers and the interval of every drought occurred every 10 years. But now it's becoming more frequent. So we've already had in the past 20 years, we've had six zoots. So obviously this climate change is changing its pattern and we can all see that. And it's becoming more frequent, intense, and also hard to predict. So, you know, it's In Mongolian context, I think it's different because, so if drought occurs in the summer, it's already a sign that, you know, it's going, so, zot is becoming in the winter. So we cannot treat drought separately from the water, water issue, I think. Because the point is, you know, the drought is already the beginning of the chain of risks. For instance, if drought occurs, there's salt next. The salt occurs means there's pasture shortages. Pasture shortages means it's already impacting the herders' livelihood. and also unhealthy livestock. And then, you know, towards the end of the chain, we will have this food security issue. Now, Mongolia is currently facing that problem already, these chain of risks. Now we have food inflation reached 25.5%. So we cannot separate this, you know, drought and, you know, zod and water and all of that. So that's why it's important. You know, it's a chain of risks. We need to manage them together, not one after the other. So the so previously Mongolia had a reactive approach. You know, as I said, six swords. And for the last 20 years, we've always had a reactive approach, even even today. But Now the time has changed and the government, state, and herders and everybody in this, every actors are aware of that. Now we need to change this model from, we need a model to have more preventative, anticipated, and resilient. So practically, I want to address three things in here to summarize my point. First, we need an integrated land and water management because, I mean, we can't manage them one without the other. Secondly, we need exactly what Andrea said, and I support her point in this early warning, early action and early forecasting based on big data. Thirdly, we need a proper set of financing and funding mechanism and risk management before disaster comes. So for Parliament's role, we need to create the right legal framework in place. But Mongolia do have several laws to support that, for instance, you know, disaster law. Also, we need to secure funding, funding sources, budgets, and also we need to ensure oversight, strong oversight so that we could we could achieve the intended outcomes and results. So, to end my speech, basically, you know, the resilience is not a slogan, it has to build into a policy. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Manhai. I open the floor to questions from Mongolian journalists and also international journalists in the room and online. So please and then.

Thank you, Madan. Some of us got an opportunity to visit some of the restoration sites where scientists are working on restoring degraded land. And one of the Major challenges there was access to, uh, educate, uh, funds in, uh, maintaining those sites, uh, you know, once the pilot starts. So my question, you also talked about, you know, access to financing. What is the major gap that the Mongolian government is seeing in, because you're running some of the restoration projects in Hustai, what is the major gap that you're seeing in accessing a secured fund, whether private or, you know, some other sort of financing?

Now, I think you've well sought this project. The core gap is definitely financing, I must admit. But most of these funds rely on national budgets. And I think Mongolia has been facing a lot of challenges because of the lack of sufficient funds, but you cannot actually deal and manage with the National Fund. So that's why we need, I mean, National Fund is a catalyst to pull in other sort of funding sources. So I think Mongolia needs to, and the Mongolian government, truly needs to consider pulling in and attracting different fund sources, you know, to maintain and sustain these projects successfully. So yeah, so national fund is not the only source. We need to attract and attract like private funds and development funds and even philanthropic partnerships. And that's very important to maintain that. But yeah, so we need to change and shift that approach and to anchor some of these best practices from other countries. And I hope that I answered your question. Yeah.

Thank you for the presentation. My name is Eric. from Kenya, Business Daily newspaper. So you've talked of moving from the reactive to the prepared approach by the government. And one of the efforts through that is communication, is early warning through available data. And as we know, most of the times the data is in scientific language. What are you doing? to communicate that data, that information to the local communities that maybe in the remote places where they may not be able to read a newspaper, get to understand the language of the television, or they have to move hundreds of miles before they could access civilization. Thank you.

Yeah, that's a very good point. I think, you know, for Mongolia, we have a forecasting department, produces, supposed to produce early warning of, you know, what's going to come. However, it's been pretty much an information. It hasn't been in like a proper action, you know, it, I think we need to change it again, you know, shift the approach from being just an information to action actionable plan. So we have a good structure of, you know, the from the top to bottom governance structure. So we even reach from the isolated herders. However, again, as I said, I think, you know, once we have this, what do you call this, the information system, we need to have a proper sort of action plan in order to be reachable and implementable to the herders. But again, every decision makes at the top, never, you know, bring the herders, the rural communities at the table. So every decision is now, these kind of decision making approach needs, first of all, herders, cooperatives, primary associations, these people needs to be involved at the decision making level in terms of pasture planning, like seasonal restoration or even land restoration, because they're the ones actually facing on the ground. And then the local government, for instance, at the local level, they're the ones needs to set a right sort of monitoring and implementation mechanisms. But where parliament role is to provide the right legal environment, secure budgeting and the strong oversight. So if we know our roles and responsibilities and have a shared integrated, you know, integrated sort of approach, a system, a proper framework. That way we would have a flow and we will have one language and then the ecosystem that we're trying to build and also constantly facing challenges will be resolved.

Thank you very much. We will take one last question.

Okay. I'd like to ask in Mongolian. So water and land management needs to be combined, you said. So what ideas do you have about this? And can you list out the necessary components of this? Thank you.

So when there's any issue, we tend to consider them, you know, in disparate two sides. So land management has its own separate budget and it's because it's our resources are limited. We want to make sure that it is the most effective usage of all of these resources. We've always lacked them. And so over having six so it's in the past 20 years and the the consequences of that is that the soil is degraded and so so these are two connected issues and learning from international experience So water and land is connected. And so we need a unified management system. And to make that happen, we'll make an action plan. And this financing that's needed for that and the legal environment that's needed for that, the governance needed for that, this management, we need to spend more energy on that. And through COP17, it's not just relevant to Mongolia, but It's also relevant to everybody. We share a lot of the same struggles. And so through this, we must learn from other international partners' mistakes so that we learn from them and implement a management water management system that's unified. And through parliament, what we need, we need to improve the legal environment. So that's what I'll be focusing on.

Thank you very much. Thank you to the speakers and to the journalists for attending today. You will all be receiving a press release during the day highlighting some of the new announcements at COP today. Just very quickly before you leave the room, one will be a new global pooled fund that will help around 70 low and lower middle income countries strengthen drought resilience. So this will be a new fund to help countries implement their national drug plans. Secondly, announcement of the first global catalytic financing platform, which will use public money to leverage much bigger flows of private finance. You will have it in the PR as well. And finally, You'll have more details about the International Drought Resilience Observatory, which Andrea mentioned, and the world's first drought resilience index, which could be game changing in terms of helping ministers make decisions of policies and investments to improve drought resilience. So again, moving from plans and data to concrete action that helps people and livelihoods and economies. You will have all of these and of course, you know the UNCCD communications team is available to support you in any way possible. Today, today at four, at four, in the action dome there will be the launch of this international drought resilience Observatory phase two and you will see exactly what this online platform looks like and the information that countries and people can obtain from this open platform so at four in the um uh action Pavilion thank you very much and have a good continuation of the cup