Over the remainder of the year, three UN COP (Conferences of the Parties) on the environment – on desertification, biodiversity and climate – are due to take place. It is unusual for them to coincide so closely, as the desertification and biodiversity summits are held every two years, whilst the climate summit takes place annually. “The links between the various issues addressed by the three COPs are crystal clear,” explained Sergio Vicente-Serrano, a research professor at the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology (IPE-CSIC) specialising in droughts, at a briefing organised by the Science Media Centre Spain.
Despite being interrelated, in the scientist’s view, it would not be practical to organise a joint mega-summit – an opinion shared by Alicia Pérez-Porro, a biologist and head of Policy Engagement and Institutional Relations at CREAF, who also took part in the session. “Each COP covers 2,500 topics, with many different working groups and committees… Although COPs have attracted increasing media attention in recent years, they are in reality working meetings,” she noted.
Both agreed that what is needed are mechanisms to ensure greater communication and coordination between them. “In almost all of them, there are always recommendations to increase synergies in terms of implementation—in the practical work of the three bodies—and this leads to economic efficiency,” added Víctor Castillo Sánchez, research professor at the Segura Centre for Soil Science and Applied Biology (CEBAS-CSIC) and director of the Soil and Water Conservation group, who also spoke at the briefing session.
August, Mongolia: drought remains a problem
The first of the three summits will take place from 17 to 28 August in Ulaanbaatar (Mongolia) and will be COP17 on desertification under the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). These meetings have been held every two years since 2001.
Reservoirs in Spain are currently at 69.62 per cent of their capacity. Data from Copernicus show that the drought persisted and intensified across much of Western Europe in May and June, with exceptionally low rainfall and soil moisture levels in France, Spain, parts of Germany and the United Kingdom. Experts emphasised that drought remains a problem in our country and that now is the time to prepare for the next one. “It is normal for us to have wet years, just as we have dry ones. The problem we usually face is that when we have a wet year, we forget about the problem,” lamented Vicente-Serrano, who is a member of the UNCCD’s Science-Policy Interface.
There needs to be greater awareness across society that drought is a recurring phenomenon and that we must be prepared for when it happens again
Víctor Castillo Sánchez
Spain is a pioneer in implementing drought plans, but there is a lack of awareness. “We need to raise awareness across society that drought is a recurring phenomenon and that we must be prepared for when it occurs. It is a shift from a reactive policy to a proactive risk management policy,” added Castillo Sánchez, who from 2009 to 2017 served as coordinator and chief scientist at the Science and Technology Unit of the UNCCD Secretariat.
As for the phenomenon of desertification, Spain is one of the countries in southern Europe – and, more broadly, within the European Union – most affected by this problem. Last year, the first atlas of desertification was published in our country, showing that 40 per cent of the territory is undergoing desertification – a figure that doubles previous estimates by including areas affected by the overexploitation of water resources, according to the CEBAS-CSIC researcher.
October, Armenia: the 2030 biodiversity target
The next summit will be COP17 on biodiversity under the CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity), which has been held every two years since 2000 and will begin on 19 October in Yerevan (Armenia) and end on 30 October.
As Pérez-Porro points out, the roadmap is the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreed at COP15, which is the equivalent of the Paris Agreement for biodiversity.
“All the upcoming COPs are highly technical because they are essentially aimed at implementing this framework, with the added factor that this year, at COP17, the first global assessment of our progress towards these targets will take place,” summarised the scientist, who will be travelling to Armenia in October.
One of the targets set was to protect a third of the land and oceans by 2030. How is that going? “It’s progressing slowly, let’s put it that way, but it is making progress,” said the expert, who pointed out that whilst this is a high-profile target, it is very difficult to achieve because protected areas are costly to maintain and that requires funding.
November, Turkey: Geopolitics at the climate summit
To round off the year, the best-known of the three summits will take place. From 9 to 20 November in Antalya (Turkey), and co-chaired by Australia, the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) COP31 climate summit will be held; this event continues to take place annually, apart from the hiatus caused by the pandemic in 2020.
“Adaptation has been gaining ground and is now one of the main issues. The message has really taken hold that mitigation alone will not get us out of this; rather, we must mitigate whilst also working on adaptation,” said Pérez-Porro, who will also be travelling to Turkey. The major stumbling block and the question addressed at every summit is who will finance this adaptation.
There is a sort of lobby against science, and part of it is driven by private companies and countries with interests in fossil fuels
Alicia Pérez-Porro
At last year’s COP30 in Belém (Brazil), any reference to fossil fuels was left out of the final agreement. Will it be possible to have it included again at the new summit? “There is a sort of lobby against science, and part of this is, unfortunately, driven by private companies and countries with interests in fossil fuels,” claimed the scientist, who added that she was waiting to see what would happen in Antalya regarding the possible mention.
And what role will the United States play in these meetings, if it attends any at all? It did not attend last year’s COP30. The three researchers agreed that its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and other international treaties is bad news, affecting, above all, funding and also discouraging other countries from following in its footsteps.
“It creates this atmosphere of a geopolitical chessboard that makes any multilateral process very difficult. At its core, it is a mistrust of multilateral processes, and that undermines the very foundations of the system,” noted Castillo Sánchez. Nor is it clear whether another country or region will take up the baton, with a weakened European Union and China not quite stepping up to lead this type of meeting.
Why are they still necessary?
As for the public’s perception of this type of meeting – which brings together hundreds of people from different countries, with the environmental impact that entails, and which often results in only minimal agreements – the three scientists agreed that such meetings remain necessary in order to make progress.
If we didn’t have these COPs, this would be practically the Wild West
Sergio Vicente-Serrano
“It’s often very frustrating, but these forums are absolutely essential and must be maintained because we need at least some forums for discussion. If we didn’t have these COPs, it would be practically the Wild West,” said Vicente-Serrano.
Furthermore, the agreements and recommendations reached at these summits ultimately “trickle down” into concrete policies at national level, according to the IPE-CSIC scientist, such as the State Pact on the Climate Emergency or the National Climate Change Adaptation Plan.
“We are living in a time when there is a deliberate drive to question the COPs and the science, but it would have been difficult to raise public awareness of these issues without this sort of event,” argued Castillo Sánchez.
“I always cry at climate summits because it drives you to despair,” confessed Pérez-Porro. “It’s true that they are minimal, because that’s how the United Nations system works – by consensus. But that’s better than nothing. Working on multilateralism today is one of the most important things there is, because it seems to be going through a rough patch and we have to shore it up and carry on,” she concluded.
