UN Desertification Summit to Allocate $12bn Drought Fund
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- UNCCD's Cop17 summit opens in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia on 17 August and runs through 28 August, where negotiators will operationalize $12bn (£8.9bn) in pledges to help 74 drought-stricken countries over seven years.
- Yasmine Fouad, UNCCD executive secretary, said the negotiations would "send a positive signal of multilateralism" with food security at the heart of discussions; more than 70 countries have submitted drought management plans needing conversion into projects.
- Saudi Arabia — a petrostate long opposed to greenhouse gas action at UNFCCC meetings — has pledged hundreds of millions to UNCCD and led creation of the Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership after hosting Cop16 in Riyadh in 2024.
- The United States remains a UNCCD member despite Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Paris agreement and UNFCCC.
- The World Food Programme projects 50 million more people could be pushed into hunger by the developing "super El Niño" as record heat, wildfires, and drought damage harvests globally.
- All $12bn so far pledged comes from public sources, far short of the $2.6tn UNCCD estimates is needed cumulatively by decade's end; UNCCD is now courting private sector funding from food and textile companies reliant on water and crops.
Why it matters: The $12bn on the table at Cop17 is under 0.5% of the $2.6tn UNCCD says is needed by 2030, leaving 74 drought-vulnerable nations exposed to the super El Niño harvest failures the World Food Programme warns could push 50 million more into hunger. Saudi Arabia bankrolling UNCCD while blocking UNFCCC climate action shows environmental diplomacy fragmenting treaty by treaty.
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