Talks on a global drought framework at UNCCD COP17 remain deadlocked, with the US opposing any international drought instrument, whether binding or voluntary.
The dispute centres on whether drought should be treated as a domestic and regional issue, as the US argues, or as a transboundary challenge requiring multilateral coordination.
The Africa Group has pushed back, saying fragmented national initiatives are not enough to close the implementation and finance gap on drought resilience.
UNCCD Deputy Executive Secretary Andrea Meza Murillo said most parties recognise drought as a global challenge requiring global solutions.
More than a week into intense negotiations at the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, talks on a global drought framework are running into the same wall that stopped them at COP16 in Riyadh: whether the world’s response to intensifying drought should be legally binding.
Despite growing concern over global drought, with one in four people affected by drought in 2022-23, a small group of parties — led most vocally by the United States — has said it will not accept any international drought instrument, whether binding or voluntary.
At the centre of the dispute is a deeper question: should drought be treated as a domestic, bilateral or regional issue, as the US argues, or as a transboundary challenge requiring multilateral coordination, as the Africa Group and others contend?
Several delegations say the standoff is testing the multilateral character of the convention itself.
At COP16 in Riyadh in December 2024, countries failed to agree on whether to pursue a binding drought protocol or a non-binding framework. The decision was pushed to COP17.
The Riyadh summit did, however, produce one concrete outcome: the Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership, which has attracted more than $12 billion in pledges.
If agreed, a global drought framework would mark the first time countries commit to a coordinated international approach to drought. It could also create a formal process for countries to report on preparedness and response, while helping unlock more predictable finance.
However, talks at COP17 have proceeded on the basis of three text options now: the bracketed text from COP16 aiming to establish an international instrument (binding or non-binding framework) and establishing an open ended Inter Governmental Working Group; a second option focused on national-level action and urging countries without national drought plans to adopt them; and a third that would launch a programme to strengthen implementation of existing provisions and identify gaps and their underlying causes.
According to sources present in the contact group meeting on drought framework, the same divide has resurfaced in discussions at COP17, with the US reiterating its “red line” against any international instrument and the Africa Group pushing back that fragmented, siloed initiatives are not enough to close the implementation gap.
The US argued that the tools to tackle drought already exist and simply need to be used — pointing to the UNCCD’s own Drought Toolbox, of which only a fraction of modules have been completed by parties, and the World Meteorological Organization’s international drought early warning system, which many countries have yet to join.
Amid the standoff, Chile introduced a bridging proposal — a voluntary case-study based “Pilot Implementation Mechanism” that would strengthen the use of existing tools and identify implementation gaps, without creating a new instrument or funding requirement.
The US signalled tentative openness to the idea, however, the African Group was unconvinced, telling Down To Earth that the exercise Chile was proposing had, in effect, already been done through earlier UNCCD reports and intersessional working groups, and that revisiting it risked taking the talks backward rather than forward.
Brazil and the European Union (EU), among other Parties, appeared keen to avoid another deferral, signalling support for a concrete decision at COP17 rather than pushing the matter to COP18 once again.
Not all delegates shared that urgency, however. One warned against rushing toward any outcome for its own sake, cautioning that “sometimes no deal is better than a bad deal.”
The US, meanwhile, maintained that governance failures around drought are domestic in nature, not international, and cited its own bilateral arrangements with different countries, as proof that action does not require a multilateral mandate.
The African Group pushed back on this framing, warning that treating drought as purely a domestic issue amounted to walking back commitments parties have already made under the Convention. Noting that countries had already committed to addressing desertification and drought collectively, the delegates said the world needed a “multiplier effect” given the accelerating intensity and geographic spread of drought.
Representatives from the African Group rejected that framing, saying no country was waiting on international instruction to act at home, and that the existing tools were not the problem so much as the absence of a governance framework to coordinate them — billions of dollars in finance, they said, remain effectively inaccessible without a system to connect countries to it.
“We should not go back and rewrite the document. We have to preserve the integrity of the text, which is already a result of compromise,” one of the delegates said.
Another representative, while talking to Down To Earth, said that the US trying to make it a national issue is a risk to multilateralism. “This is a multilateral group; we need to help each other, we need to put in institutions and streamline finance. A legally binding agreement will have clear obligations.”
Down To Earth asked UNCCD Deputy Executive Secretary Andrea Meza Murillo about the impasse at a press conference. She acknowledged the divide but said it does not reflect the will of most Parties — comparing it to climate change scepticism and said that this should not be mistaken for the mainstream view.
“We are hearing some positions that this should be addressed as a local event but this is not the position of most of the parties. Most of the parties are recognising that this is a global challenge and this should require and bring global solutions,” she said, adding that differing views were part of “the beauty of multilateralism.”
Meza expressed optimism that COP17 would still produce an agreement, noting that many countries were grappling with severe impacts from this year’s strong El Niño and “cannot go back to their constituencies” and say nothing came out as a negotiated outcome.
The tensions playing out over drought are not isolated. At COP17, the US has opposed references to gender, Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities and Indigenous Knowledge appearing in COP17 decision texts. These items were then set aside from the agenda for further consultation.
Speaking at a separate press conference earlier in the day, Beth Roberts, Director of the Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights said the move was a procedural attack, and that other parties were initially unprepared to counter it.
She called on other parties to use the procedural tools available to them to protect the multilateral space, saying no single party should be allowed to dictate the conversation.