The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has pledged five million euros to finance the implementation of the ‘International Alliance for Drought Resilience to accelerate action and help countries to be better prepared for future droughts’, a joint initiative presented with Senegal that has already been joined by some twenty countries.
During his participation in the XXVII Climate Summit (COP27) being held in Sharm el Sheik (Egypt), the President pledged that Spain will redouble its efforts to combat the effects of drought and encouraged other countries to support the proposal of Spain and Senegal for the creation of this alliance.
«We hope that new countries will join us. Together we must give a good response against climate change to improve and defend our way of life,» he said.
For Sanchez, this initiative can serve to provide the necessary political impetus to help countries that are sufficiently prepared for the coming drought to prosper.
The president explained that Spain has been suffering for years from the threat of drought and water scarcity, which forces us to rethink the extremes of drought and torrential rains, depleting biodiversity, putting resources and food security at risk. «Only good management of water resources can mitigate the risks posed by this threat,» he said.
Precisely, he argued that because Spain suffers from drought and desertification, it is in solidarity with other countries that also suffer from it and defended that this has always been a priority in the Spanish cooperation for development.
Sánchez, together with the President of Senegal, Macky Sall, presented the new Alliance as «a specific solution for the United Nations» to the impacts of climate change.
Leaders from more than 25 countries and 20 organizations participated in the presentation of the initiative. The declaration was made at a side event on the sidelines of COP27, which began on Monday, where leaders from all sectors pledged to drive change in the way the world addresses the growing risks of drought.
Specifically, this would be a shift from emergency response to building long-term resilience given that droughts now strike with a third more frequency and intensity than in 2000. Climate change is expected to exacerbate droughts in the future.
Recently, drought has affected Australia, Europe, the western United States, Chile, the Horn of Africa and southern Africa, which according to the UN shows how no country or region is immune to impacts whose effects generate billions of dollars annually in property damage alone.
Together with the President of Senegal, Macky Sall, Sánchez presented the Alliance as «a specific solution for the United Nations» to the impacts of climate change.
In a joint statement, Sanchez and Sall said, «We are only as resilient to climate change as our land is. Building resilience to drought disasters is the way to secure the gains we make in each Sustainable Development Goal, particularly for the most vulnerable people.»
They explained that the partnership’s mission is to build momentum to make the earth’s resilience to drought and climate change a reality by 2030.
During the presentation, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Ibrahim Thiaw, stated that the planet is in a race for resilience to drought.
«It is a race we can win. Drought is a natural hazard, but it does not have to lead to human disaster. Solutions are available and we can create a drought-resilient world by increasing our ambition, harnessing political will and joining forces to act together,» he encouraged.
At the launch of the initiative Spain announced 5 million euros as co-organizer of the initiative to support the work of the Alliance to catalyze a process to mobilize more resources for this agenda, while Kenyan President William Ruto pledged to plant 5 billion trees in the next five years and 10 billion trees in the next ten years.
The Alliance calls on leaders to make drought resilience a priority in national development and cooperation, including deepening the engagement of stakeholders, such as the private sector, in drought resilience work.
The initiative aims to consolidate regional initiatives to accelerate innovation sharing, technology transfer and resource mobilization. It will also collaborate with other platforms, including the initiative launched by the UN Secretary-General and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to achieve universal coverage of early warning systems and regional initiatives to maximize the benefits of working together on drought resilience.
According to the UNCCD’s latest ‘Drought and Numbers’ report, droughts have increased by 29 percent since 2000 and affect some 55 million people a year. It is one of the major threats to sustainable development, especially in developing countries.
In the same vein, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that droughts will become more frequent, severe and long-lasting and that three out of four people in the world will live in drier and more water-scarce conditions by 2050; one in four children will live in areas with extreme water scarcity and up to 216 million people could be forced to migrate by 2050.
