The only binding treaty on degraded land and drought: inside the UNCCD

Background

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the UNCCD, was established in 1994. It is the one framework with legal force that the world has built to take on desertification and the effects of drought, and the only binding international agreement that ties environment and development to sustainable land management. The Convention describes itself as the driving force behind Sustainable Development Goal 15. There are 197 Parties to it: 196 country Parties and the European Union. Its stated principles are participation, partnership and decentralization, and it binds governments, scientists, policymakers, the private sector and communities into one effort to restore and manage land. Degraded or drought-hit land, the Convention argues, loses the capacity to sustain life, and that runs on into crop failure, migration and conflict. The Conference of the Parties is the top body; at its thirteenth session, in 2017, it adopted a strategic framework for 2018 to 2030 and asked Parties to apply it in national policies. An Intergovernmental Working Group on Drought ran from 2022 to 2024. By the Convention's own count, 169 of the 196 country parties are affected by desertification, land degradation and drought.