UN Conference to Combat Desertification Ends in Failure

Big initiatives do not always lead to positive results. Negotiations at the UN Conference to Combat Desertification, COP16, have ended without reaching a binding agreement to combat the phenomenon. The talks ended a day later than planned, as parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which brings together 196 countries and the European Union, were still trying to reach a consensus, which ultimately failed. Ahead of the conference, which began on December 2, its executive secretary, Ibrahim Thiaw, expressed hope for a "bold decision that could help reverse the trend of the most widespread and disruptive environmental catastrophe: desertification." But "parties need more time to agree on the best way forward," he concluded at the end of the meeting. The Riyadh talks come after the partial failure of the biodiversity talks in Colombia, the failure in South Korea to reach an agreement on plastic pollution and a disappointing agreement at the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan on financial assistance for developing countries to combat climate change. Desertification, "fueled by human-induced environmental destruction," costs the world more than $300 billion each year and could affect 75 percent of the world's population by 2050, according to the UN. A delegate from an African country at the Riyadh conference said African representatives wanted a binding protocol that would require governments to adopt plans to combat desertification. But two other participants at COP16 said that developed countries were not in favor of such a protocol, advocating instead for a "framework" that African countries considered inadequate. Before the Riyadh negotiations, the UN estimated that 1.5 billion hectares of land needed to be redeveloped by the end of the decade, and that at least $2.6 trillion in global investment was needed to achieve this. The first week of COP16 brought commitments of more than $12 billion from entities such as the Arab Coordination Group, several national and regional institutions, and the Riyadh Global Partnership for Desertification Resilience, which aims to mobilize public and private funds to help countries threatened by the phenomenon.