Spotlight on UN desertification summit as it mulls how to spend $12bn war chest

As swathes of the northern hemisphere bake in what could be the hottest year on record, with wildfires blazing across North America and Europe and heatwaves afflicting millions across Asia, the UN’s bi-annual talks on desertification have assumed much greater importance – and have started attracting more money.Work will begin this week on allocating more than $12bn (£8.9bn) to vulnerable countries to help them deal with drought and land degradation, when scores of countries gather in Mongolia for Cop17.Yasmine Fouad, executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), whose 17th “conference of the parties” begins in Ulaanbaatar on 17 August, said the negotiations would “send a positive signal of multilateralism”.The key aim is to put pledges of billions of dollars made two years ago into action through projects in the developing world.Countries around the world are bracing for food price rises as a result of damage to harvests from record heat and lack of water, and the World Food Programme predicts that 50 million more people could be pushed into hunger by the “super El Niño” weather system currently developing. Initiatives to restore land and prevent drought have up to now been poorly funded and badly managed.According to Fouad, that situation was changing rapidly as nations began to recognise the risk. “At the heart of our discussion is the topic of food security,” she said. “The more you work on restoring land, the more you have productive soil to ensure food security. That kind of narrative should be part of our finance [initiatives].”The UNCCD was signed in 1992, one of a trio of environmental treaties launched at the Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro, alongside the better known UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is parent treaty to the Paris agreement of 2015; and the Convention on Biological Diversity, which includes targets on protecting species. Over the last three decades, the desertification treaty has been the “poor relation”, garnering the least attention of the three and producing scant progress.But that is changing. Saudi Arabia – a petrostate that for years has blocked action on greenhouse gas emissions and any mention of fossil fuels at UNFCCC meetings, and has refused calls to provide climate finance – is an enthusiastic backer of UNCCD. The kingdom, which hosted the Cop16 UNCCD summit in 2024, has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to its aims, as well as joining with allies through larger groups and institutions to offer much bigger collective pledges.The US is also still a member of the UNCCD, despite Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement and UNFCCC.Osama Faqeeha, the Saudi deputy minister of environment, said: “Land degradation and drought have significant impacts on food and water security, biodiversity, climate resilience and the wellbeing of almost half the world’s population. Cop16 in Riyadh was a historical turning point in global awareness and the drive for action to address land management and drought.”Drone view shows a farmer driving a tractor at a paddy field in Cirebon, West Java, Indonesia. Photograph: Willy Kurniawan/ReutersAt the core of the Cop17 talks, which will run until 28 August, will be the “operationalisation” of the Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership, forged in 2024 under the leadership of Saudi Arabia. Under this fund and related initiatives, countries and institutions pledged $12bn over seven years to help 74 countries stricken by drought and the accompanying problem of land degradation.This amount is small compared with the scale of what is needed – about $2.6tn cumulatively by the end of this decade, according to UNCCD estimates, to repair degraded land, halt desertification, protect against drought and restore soils.But the pledges are a major step forward and show what could be a useful new addition to global environmental funding. “More than 70 countries submitted their drought management plans, and we need to convert those plans into projects that would be implemented,” Fouad said.Such projects could include overhauling irrigation systems to make them more efficient; replanting land with more drought-resistant crops; and improving rainwater storage facilities for farmers.All of the $12bn so far pledged is from the public sector, but moves are under way to raise additional funds from the private sector. Fouad said food companies, textile makers and others that are heavily reliant on water and crops should play a role.Lily Maxwell-Lwin, head of advocacy at the Dutch nonprofit organisation Commonland, which focuses on degraded land, said rich countries should recognise that funding for drought and land restoration in poor countries would benefit them too. “Our core ask for Cop17 is financing for restoration on par with what’s available for emissions-focused climate action, backed by governments recognising that degraded land abroad is a direct threat to their food security, migration pressure and supply chain resilience,” he said.