Highlights and images for 11 December 2024

On Wednesday, all eyes were on the contact groups at the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP 16). No formal meetings of the Committee of the Whole (COW), the Committee on Science and Technology (CST), or the Committee for the Review of the Implementation of the Convention (CRIC) were held.

Instead, delegates found themselves in contact group meetings, which were scheduled from 10:00 am until 11:00 pm. While there were short breaks throughout the day, the pressure to make progress on the many outstanding draft decisions was palpable both in the small conference rooms and in the corridors where delegates rushed between rooms, or grabbed a quick snack or coffee to fuel themselves through the long day.

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

In the COW contact group on other matters, delegates worked on, among others, the draft decisions on land tenure, sand and dust storms, synergies with other Conventions, and gender.

The CRIC contact group spent a good part of the day on the draft decision on assessment of financial flows to close the existing financing gap and enhance the effectiveness of desertification, land degradation, and drought (DLDD) mitigation efforts. Late in the afternoon, they began negotiations on the draft decision on capacity building to further the implementation of the Convention.

The CST contact group spent most of the day discussing the draft decision on the future functioning of the Convention’s Science-Policy Interface (SPI), before moving onto the the work programme for the SPI for the biennium 2025-26.

The COW contact group on budget continued to meet, as they discussed the ramifications of a zero nominal growth budget versus a budget increase, acknowledging zero nominal growth would effectively be a decrease in the budget due to inflation and existing budget shortfalls.  

The COW informal group on drought aimed to conclude its work and said they would report back to the COW contact group when finished, noting agreement on all the modalities to set up an intergovernmental working group to negotiate either a protocol or a framework on drought.

Some of the negotiations on the draft decisions have resembled quicksand as parties get sucked into debates over language and phrases that can sometimes take hours to resolve before they can once again come to the surface. As the sun set over Riyadh, delegates were preparing for a late night as they attempt to conclude first readings of most of the draft decisions before heading into the final 48-hours before the COP is scheduled to conclude.