World Leaders
Launching International Drought Resilience
Alliance at COP 27
- Monday, 7 November
2022, Sharm el-Sheikh Climate Change
Conference, Egypt
- 17:00-18:00 (local time)
/ 15:00-16:00 UTC / 16:00-17:00 CET/10:00-11:00
US EDT
- (check local time here)
- The event will be
livestreamed.
- Advance interviews are
available, contact: pr...@unccd.int
- Audiovisual materials
are available, including:
- High-resolution b-roll of
northern Kenya drought: https://bit.ly/3OEs5KD 2) https://bit.ly/38t0Pyo (credit:
UNCCD)
- Land restoration footage
from Great Green Wall: https://bit.ly/3SWBVJG (credit UNCCD and
Makewaves).
- Drought footage from
Spain: https://bit.ly/3CZNCKa (credit Ministry of
Environment, Spain)
- Photos and captions:
https://bit.ly/3rRSpY2
Leaders to Launch
International Drought Resilience Alliance at COP
27
Bonn, 24 October 2022 -- World
leaders will launch a new alliance to boost
drought resilience on Monday, 7 November 2022, at
the Sharm el-Sheikh Climate Change Conference in
Egypt.
The high-level launch event,
jointly convened by Senegal and Spain, titled,
International Drought Resilience Alliance, will
take place from 17:00-18:00hrs local
time.
World leaders recognize the
urgent need to shift drought management approaches
from the current emergency response to resilience.
The Alliance is envisioned as a collaborative
platform to rally political momentum and trigger
actions that support countries, cities, and
communities to enable this shift and significantly
reduce their vulnerability, impact and exposure to
extreme drought.
President of the Government of
Spain Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón announced at
the 77th session of the United Nations General
Assembly in September 2022 that creating the
alliance is “a specific solution for the United
Nations” to the impacts of climate
change.
“Together with Senegal, we
will support the creation of an ‘International
Alliance for Drought Resilience’ to promote
innovation, technology transfer and the
mobilization of resources to combat drought in
countries exposed to this threat,” President
Sánchez said.
President Macky Sall of Senegal
said “When the State is in danger, when it is
destabilized in any way, the foundations of
community fracture making way for chaos. We all –
governments, citizens and civil society – have an
obligation not to saw off the branch we are
sitting on.”
“I am thinking of the
environmental peril, in particular global warming,
drought and desertification, and weather-related
natural disasters. The State of
the Climate in Africa 2020 estimates that by
2030, 118 million Africans will be at risk of
extreme poverty due to a combination of sea level
rise, flooding, drought and other related
phenomena,” President Sall added.
According to the latest Drought in
Numbers report compiled by the UN Convention
to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), droughts have
increased in frequency by 29 percent since 2000,
with some 55 million people affected every year.
Recent droughts in Australia, Europe, western
United States, Chile, the Horn and Southern
Africa, show that no country is immune to
drought.
The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) projects that droughts will
be more frequent, severe and last longer. Climate
change bears much of the responsibility, but so
does how we manage our land and water resources.
The IPCC estimates that three out of every four
people in the world will be living in drier,
water-scare conditions by
2050.
Helping countries, cities and
communities to build drought resilience presents
an opportunity to significantly reduce the high
social and economic costs. This includes the loss
of life, livelihoods and biological diversity,
water and food insecurity, and disruption in the
energy, transportation and tourism sectors, as
well as forced migration, displacement, and
conflicts over scarce
resources.
For more information, please
contact:
Contact UNCCD:
