RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — A cascade of environmental summits in the final months of this year has made some people ask, are we drowning in climate talks? Here in Riyadh, where the United Nations Conference to Combat Desertification is tackling issues like rapidly increasing global droughts and sustainable land management, the question is boiling to the surface.
In addition to the yearly climate change conference — COP in shorthand — which is popular in the news, a wide range of delegates, nongovernmental organizations, public and private enterprises and media are treated every two years to an additional pair of environment-related gatherings that sprout from the same highly productive Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
While the big climate-change Conference of Parties addresses topics like greenhouse gas emissions and transitions to a green economy — dubbed by one observer as the “rock star COP” — there are lesser-known COPs that respectively focus on biodiversity and, as the case this month, combating desertification.
On Dec. 9, at just about the halfway mark of the UNCCD, as it’s known, one national delegate said enough is enough. Juan Carlos Monterrey-Gómez of Panama delivered a fiery indictment of the overall COP processes, saying: “The intertwined crises of land degradation, climate change and biodiversity laws cannot be addressed in isolation. They demand unified, coherent and holistic measures.” His speech was met by light applause in the back of the room.
One burden caused by the three climate conferences is multiple reporting responsibilities. To that end, Monterrey-Gómez announced “a bold step forward,” outlining that “we will no longer submit separate nationally determined contributions [on climate change], national biodiversity strategies or land degradation neutrality targets [desertification],” instead offering a replacement “nature pledge” to unify all national commitments.
Funding is another major burden, as is getting to the COPs themselves, requiring three expensive international journeys, which is demanding for low- and medium-income countries, not to mention the ironically large carbon footprint from all the flying. (This year’s climate-change gathering, COP29, took place in Azerbaijan and the biodiversity conference was in Colombia.)
Two geopolitical blocs — Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) — may have powerful voting influence at the annual climate-change COP, but they skip the biennial COPs. The absence leaves countries represented by these coalitions with a minimal voice in the proceedings and the blocs themselves with less information from discussions and results. PassBlue asked the LDC group about its no-show but didn’t receive a response.
The Small Island Developing States (SIDS) group is trying to fill some of the vacuum by holding its first pavilion at the UNCCD. Calvin James, executive director of the Partnership Initiative for Sustainable Land Management, which aims to accelerate projects related to UNCCD goals, is running the pavilion. It’s meant to be an informal space for discussions and strategizing in AOSIS’s absence. He has no idea why the group isn’t here, either.
Given that the Caribbean islands are still working hard to educate the world that they are dealing with drought, desertification, sand winds from Africa and general land issues, James considers their presence important. Attendance is higher at this year’s UNCCD conference than any previous ones, and James isn’t surprised, “because in my humble opinion, if you solve the land problem, you solve the climate change problem.”
James, who is from Trinidad and Tobago, also pointed out how national governments also create redundancies in their own systems “because the way governments work in most countries is also in silos,” he said. “So, the ministry of agriculture is its own entity. The ministry of environment is its own entity. They all go to different COPs, and there’s often problems with sharing of information.”
Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, the head of the Global Economic Forum — the financial mechanism of the UNCCD — echoed these concerns in an opening day talk. He suggested that countries should move toward consolidating all climate and climate treaty related efforts in one branch of government.
But not just that. “I think the 30 years of COPs will end very soon,” he said. “We should have one COP every three years. One COP with the three Rio conventions.”
Efforts exist to blend knowledge and work among the COPs, with a report on such actions called for in the last desertification COP and issued in September. These efforts mostly consist of joint announcements, combined outreach activities and cross-appearances, such as the UNCCD pavilion set up at the climate COP in 2023 in Dubai.
Even if there were only three conferences, resolution would be far off. There is also a plastics treaty negotiation, which was held in South Korea in November (and failed to reach an agreement).
In addition, there is a water COP, based on the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. That occurs every three years, and it will be held in Victoria, Zimbabwe, in 2025.
Chiyedza Heri, the policy and advocacy manager at BirdLife Zimbabwe, a nongovernmental organization, is participating at the Riyadh COP to explore connections between desertification and the Ramsar convention, or what she called the forgotten mother of COPs.
“Without water, there is no life,” Heri said, pointing out that the Ramsar Convention preceded the Rio trio of COPs.
Heri, like many participants here in Riyadh, agrees that there are enormous complexities in even thinking about unifying the three Rio meetings. Short of having one conference, she notes that methodologies for sharing information from all three should be improved. “We should reach a point where, regardless of whatever conference you can make it to, all of the key cross-cutting issues are adequately covered across all the conferences,” she said.
Indeed, all indications show a severe siloing problem. Efficiency and efficacy are the heart of the matter, participants say, noting that this is where the most soul-searching is needed. Are all the conferences a net positive because each sub-issue of the global environmental crisis requires dedicated time and attention, or is the overlap creating huge gaps in data, problem-solving and communication?
Gómez-Monterrey firmly believes the latter. “This fragmentary approach we have taken, that’s splitting our collective efforts across separate frameworks, has failed to deliver the transformative changes that we demand and that we need,” he said. “This is nothing short of catastrophic.”
Yet any change to COP formats must be initiated by the parties to the conventions — the countries themselves — and it remains to be seen how much this momentum will build and to what end.
This article is part of PassBlue’s small state series.
Maria Luisa Gambale, a graduate of Harvard University, lives in New York City. In addition to writing, she produces film and media projects and is director of the 2011 film “Sarabah,” about the Senegalese rapper-activist Sister Fa. She has produced and directed video for National Geographic, ABC News, The New York Times and Fusion Network. Gambale’s work in all media can be viewed at www.veradonnafilms.com.
