The US blocks a global agreement against drought

BarcelonaDrought is not just a problem at home: it is a phenomenon that has increased by 30% since 2000 worldwide. In fact, it is estimated that by 2050, three out of every four inhabitants of the planet will be affected by drought. Even so, the United States has blocked a global agreement against drought and has postponed international negotiations on this issue until 2028. All the world's governments gathered in Mongolia this August have not managed to sign a binding treaty in this regard, but they have announced that they will mobilize 1.3 billion dollars to restore land and combat desertification in 23 states. The protocol to finance these projects, however, was to be defined within this global agreement against drought, which has been left pending.

Up to 197 world governments were gathered in Ulan Bator for the international summit organized by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). This COP17 sought solutions to desertification and soil degradation – 40% of the land has lost its biological and economic productivity. It is one of the few multilateral forums in which the United States still participates, but in this case they have done so to obstruct negotiations, alleging that droughts are national problems that each state must face on its own.

Washington has withdrawn from UN summits on climate change (COP31 will be held in November in Turkey) and on Biodiversity (whose COP17 will meet in October in Armenia), but it was still part of the UNCCD. However, at this summit – which debated drought and land degradation not only from an environmental perspective, but also as an economic problem – it was very present. From the beginning, however, it intervened to veto the issues that indigenous communities and civil society had proposed on the agenda.

While the impact of El Niño is already being felt in Latin America and is exacerbating extreme drought in the Amazon, world governments have not been able to reach a global pact against drought and have postponed this negotiation until the next summit, UNCCD COP18, which will take place in Egypt in 2028.

The advance of desertification in the world is one of the most worrying effects of the climate crisis. Every year, about 100 million hectares of productive land are lost, an area equivalent to Egypt, and this already has impacts on food prices. The UN estimates that droughts generate losses of about 300 billion dollars annually worldwide. According to these calculations, the planet needs an investment of 355 billion dollars annually until 2030 to stop land degradation. This is why the "mobilization" agreement of 1.3 billion dollars agreed in Mongolia, despite having been celebrated by NGOs and international observers, falls far short of real needs.

Pasture lands

In addition, of the 1.300 million mobilized at the summit, the vast majority (1.200 million) will be allocated to 45 projects for the recovery of pastures, given that this 2026 is the International Year of Pastures and Pastoralists. Pastures cover 54% of the land surface and support about 2.000 million people, but suffer from chronic abandonment. For this reason, observer organizations welcomed this package, even though, as the UN admitted, only 650 million of all these are "new commitments" of funding, and not projects that already existed.

Among the small successes of the summit, however, is the creation of a Drought Resilience Investment Fund (DRIF), which aims to mobilize 400 million dollars in private capital to finance projects against the effects of drought, and a Drought Resilience Index that will help countries assess their drought levels.

More than 3.000 million people live in areas of the world experiencing desertification and land degradation, including the Mediterranean, where droughts are becoming increasingly frequent and intense. The UN wanted to address this in order to combat the global effects it has on food security, access to water, and economic stability. But in Mongolia, it has once again been demonstrated that multilateralism is in decline, even when it comes to addressing issues that affect the global economy.