Highlights and images for 10 December 2024

Tuesday was Resilience Day at the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 16) to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). During the day, various sessions focused on strengthening resilience against escalating threats from desertification, land degradation, and drought (DLDD), water scarcity, and sand and dust storms (SDS). At the same time, delegates had to strengthen their own resilience to keep up with nearly 12 hours of negotiations in some of the contact groups.

In the morning, the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC) held a brief session to address the agenda items on securing additional investments and relations with financial mechanisms and the programme of work for the next session of the CRIC. They referred these items to the CRIC contact group.

Want to dig deeper into today's talks? Read the full Earth Negotiations Bulletin daily report.

The contact groups met throughout the day as delegates painstakingly negotiated draft decisions on agenda items under the CRIC, the Committee of the Whole (COW), and the Committee on Science and Technology (CST). The COW contact group on the budget and the informal group on drought also convened.

In the COW contact group on other matters, delegates worked on the draft decisions on land tenure and migration during the day, with plans to discuss SDS next.

The CRIC contact group convened in the afternoon and began to address the draft decision on collaboration with the Global Environment Facility.

The CST contact group met throughout most of the day addressing the draft decisions on: aridity trends, projections, and impacts; recommendations from the Science-Policy Interface (SPI) emanating from their analysis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report; and knowledge sharing, technology transfer, and innovation.

The COW contact group on budget and the COW informal group on drought also convened in the morning. An informal group under the Joint CRIC-CST made progress on the draft decision on improving the procedures for the communication of information, as well as the quality and formats of reports to be submitted to the COP.

In the corridors, many delegates expressed concern about the pace of the negotiations. As of Tuesday morning, only one “clean” draft decision had emerged out of the various contact groups. But, as one delegate commented outside the contact groups’ rooms, “Some say, ‘Oh, no. It’s already Tuesday,’ but others respond, ‘Don’t worry, it’s only Tuesday.’”