Short lines at the desertification COP16, but long-term impact
It’s a long way from Saudi Arabia to anywhere: 40 hours from my last day in Riyadh ‘til I finally hit the pillow in Colorado.
Running 18-hour days for two weeks at the UN Conference of Parties to Combat Desertification made time a blur. Only later do details emerge — and some surprises.
Incessant traffic jams, for example. Who made Riyadh freeways with no off ramps to allow a left turn? That forces drivers in the wrong direction, prompting them to make U-turns on the freeway itself, and creating amazing traffic jams as everyone scrambles across lanes to get to the tiny hole available to go miles back to make the now right turn to where you wanted to go in the first place. I hope whoever designed that traffic pattern spends Jahannam, the Muslim version of hell’s eternity, driving those roads. Wrecks are everywhere. By the way, it’s not uncommon to see a camel go by in a truck.
This damn city could sure use a metro. And, to be fair, they are building one. But it’s challenging — when you pump oil at $10 a barrel — to switch from personal cars to modern transit. Or even to EV’s. I suspect that they will, given how bad the air pollution is. It hangs over the desert, a caustic invasion of lungs. That kind of smog helped drive China to now sell more EV’s than internal combustion engines. Yes, China has passed the combustion-renewables tipping point, and there will be no going back. Why? ‘cause EV’s are cheaper to run. And I’ll place a small wager that they will beat us to autonomous EV’s as well.
But I shouldn’t whine. Saudi was incredible – Arabian nights in palaces as opulent as dreams…
I know. None of that justifies the carbon burnt to go that far. Winging into Riyadh, I had hoped this could be the COP that would bring together the “Rio Trio,” (the UN Framework Convention on Biodiversity (CCD), the Convention on Climate (UNFCCC), and this Convention on Combating Desertification (CCD).
That’d be a tall order, given that the Biodiversity COP two months ago and the Climate COP a month ago are both seen as having failed. And it’s now believed that CCD COP16 failed, as well: Delegates didn’t make the proposed agreement to fight drought binding, despite releasing a report showing that 75% of humanity faces devastating drought, that 75% of the world’s landmass is drier now than it was 30 years ago, yes, worsened by climate change.
But take a closer look — and through a longer lens — and we see a different picture.
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), was established in 1994, as one of the original “Framework Conventions” of the Rio Earth Summit. Signed by 197 countries and the European Union, it was the sole globally binding treaty. Created to connect environmental protection and sustainable land management for development it champions land stewardship to avoid, reduce and reverse land degradation.
And the Saudis are taking it seriously. Before the desertification COP even opened, the Saudi hosts put an ad in Bloomberg noting that 40% of the earth’s land is degraded, and that this is putting at risk the $44 trillion — half the world’s GDP — that is dependent on healthy soils.
“We want COP16 to be a historic turning point in global awareness of this issue,” Dr. Osama Faqeeha, the desertification COP President and Saudi Deputy Minister of Environment, said.
A COP focused on soil. This matters.
Wow. A COP focused on soil. This matters. And this was the first COP where I heard Allan Savory’s wisdom “It’s not drought that causes bare ground, but bare ground that causes drought,” quoted repeatedly from the main stages.
Regenerative agriculture, which starts with healthy soil, calls for minimal disturbance of the soil, year-round cover on the ground, living roots in the ground continuously, diversity of cropping and animal impact, is what ensures that there is no bare ground.
If we are to ensure ongoing availability of the land-based resources vital to your and my survival, countering desertification is crucial. I’m old. I’ll be safely dead before the worst impacts of industrial agriculture — now, with climate change, the primary driver of land degradation — mean that global harvests decline. But I dunno about you…until I’m in that ground, contributing my nutrients, I’m a mite sentimental about eating.
So strangely, this seemed to be the empty COP — in more ways than one. In contrast to Dubai a year ago, or even Baku a month ago, COP16 was blissfully quiet.
Well, at least the wi-fi’s not crowded, typically one of the worst challenges at a COP.
And clearing UN security was a breeze, tho it being Saudi, I had to be “wanded” with a metal detector by a woman. At least for the first week. Security quickly loosened up, and gender sensitivity vanished. It was like we all knew each other.
More space meant time to see the people who mattered, for example, Natalie Topa, of the World Food Programme who helps some of the poorest people on the planet regenerate their Sahalian desert using an array of regenerative practices.
It allowed substantive discussions of how the “non-negotiated solutions” such as regenerative agriculture ARE the solutions to the desertification, biodiversity, food security, migration, and climate crises. [Negotiated solutions are what the nations of the world formally agree to implement. Except that they don’t…agree or then implement. Non-negotiated solutions are what each of us does every day to solve these problems, from installing renewable energy, driving an EV, or better, taking the metro, buying regeneratively grown meat and veggies, and supporting the NGOs and companies working to solve the crises facing us.]
Helmy Abouleish joined us at the Pavilion to describe how SEKEM is helping some of the world’s poorest farmers in Egypt transition to “biodynamic agriculture.” SEKEM was just honored by the UN Environment Programme as a Champion of the Earth for its “entrepreneurial vision” and reforestation work, “transforming large swathes of desert into thriving agricultural business, advancing sustainable development across the country.”
With HH Princess Mashael bint Saud Al-Shalan, the Co-Founder of Aeon, our NOW Partners team showed how to reverse desertification as we deliver food security, climate resilience, and economic development.
With Ahmed Alshazly, and my NOW Partners, Laura Santucci, Walter Link and Merijn Dols, we described our efforts to spread the work of the “Economy of Love” to pay small-holder farmers for sequestering carbon. EOL is, I believe, the best high integrity carbon market in the world. We described how we created the first voluntary carbon market platform in Africa at COP 27 in Egypt. It is now the first example of an African regional standard.
For the first time, our work on regenerative food systems, agroforestry, crop diversification, and holistic grazing was being discussed in almost every conversation.
With Patrick Worms of CIFOR-ICRAF, we showed how, “it’s not the cow, it’s the how”: holistic grazing reverses desertification, feeding people, restoring biodiversity and solving the climate crisis. I know I’ve said that a few times before, but this is the first set of conversations in which these strategies were seen as integral — and key to addressing these growing challenges, which the U.N. and others have called a global polycrisis.
Yes, a binding agreement to tackle drought would have been good. For those of us who believe it is better for the nations of the world to talk than to fight, it would sure be nice if one of these dern COPs could succeed, at least a little. But yes, silly me. COPs always fail, right? Well…
I do not think this COP failed. For the first time at a COP, any COP, the nations of the world recognized that the real answer lies in “Non-negotiated Outcomes.” This is precisely what my colleagues at Natural Capitalism and NOW Partners have advocated for quite a while.
The Saudi Presidency kicked it off by announcing the Riyadh Action Agenda. Throughout COP, the Presidency made clear it was serious about action. We attended the daily sessions focused on how to implement this commitment, met with Climate Champions Gonzalo Munoz Abogabir and Nigel Topping, and committed NOW Partners’ new Global Academy to chronicle the best regenerative programs around the world.
These real solutions are happening, even as nations dither. Perhaps the nations had no choice. When the news is consistent: this is the fourth global COP to fail in 2024, maybe it’s time to try something else. But to me it was exciting to see the UN recognize this at Riyadh. And for the first time, our work on regenerative food systems, agroforestry, crop diversification, and holistic grazing was being discussed in almost every conversation. No one contested that these are the key to combatting desertification, restoring biodiversity and solving the climate crisis. The debate is over: this is the way to unite the Rio Trio. Building on this will be a big part of my work in 2025. On to Belem and the next climate COP.
Will communities around the world embrace renewable energy, develop using smarter, cheaper, better, faster technologies, create real food security using regenerative agriculture? If the U.S. wants cling to the ‘50’s, go for it. Except that now even McKinsey is reporting how what they call “regenerative agriculture”— minimal tillage and cover cropping—can increase cash flows by up to $80 billion over the next decade, sequester carbon, save water and increase farm values. Suddenly it seems everyone wants on the regenerative bandwagon: Bayer’s Monsanto is badging their chemicals as “regenerative.” They’re not, but when what is now called the worst merger in history has tanked Bayer’s market capitalization to less than half of what it paid for Monsanto speaking with a certain economy of truth is not a surprise.
Real solutions are happening, even as nations dither.
So it was exciting to meet with Saudi business people keen to bring our curriculum of Regenerative Value Creation to their employees. They were interested in getting our expertise on how to implement regenerative agriculture in a desert, and how they might replicate the Egyptian success in carbon markets in Saudi, and perhaps across Africa.
I know…. Saudi Arabia is not what comes to mind when you think about solutions. Flying in, I worried how they would receive an aging blond in a cowboy hat. When I worked in Afghanistan, the hat stayed home. Here, everywhere we went, immigration officials, waiters, security guards, uber drivers, and the lovely people serving me Saudi coffee and dates in the nomad tents pitched all around the COP loved the hat. And I fell in love with Saudi coffee.
Never thought I’d say this, but I think I will be back.
Featured photo: Security line at COP 16, Riyadh, 2024. Source: Hunter Lovins
