'These are not infinite resources': A conversation with Ibrahim Thiaw

At COP 28 last week, I had the chance to speak with Ibrahim Thiaw, the executive secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the U.N. agency working to combat desertification. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. What are the main themes you're focused on as you look at land use restoration and how to protect the dwindling land that exists in the world today? Essentially how we as humans have interacted with land and the kinds of relationships we have developed with land. We have been extracting resources from land, it's like an extractive industry. And we have come to realize that these are not infinite resources, they need to be managed. So it is about time for humanity now to consider land as natural capital that needs to be managed, and we should review the way we interact with land. Our lifestyle is simply not compatible with the capacity of Earth to regenerate itself. We are also dealing with drought. Droughts are a natural phenomenon that have been there for millennia, but they have increased over time, they are more frequent and more severe. So we are dealing also with the phenomenon of drought. And drought is an interesting thing, where countries are experiencing years of drought, and then sudden flooding, right? It's either too little water or too much water. Tell us about that dynamic. Droughts and floods are usually twins, they follow each other. The drier the land is, the less ability it has to absorb water when it rains; therefore, the runoff is extremely high, but also the drier the ecosystems affected and the capacity of the ecosystem to retain water is also lower, so you also have landslides. So what do you want to see happen on the adaptation side? Obviously, there's a lot of discussion at COP around mitigation, and certainly if we can lower the trajectory of carbon emissions that will help. But given where we're headed, what do you want to see in terms of land use that we can change? And particularly I’m thinking about the institutions that fund global development efforts, the U.N. agencies that implement and fund, or the multilateral development banks or the bilateral agencies. What do you want to see them do differently? The main driver of emissions in the world today is our food systems. Therefore, we need to redefine the way we produce food, and the way we consume it, and the way we transport it, and the way we discard or waste it. When you come to a climate COP, of course, the discussion is about climate. You see a farmer from around the world, you ask them whether they spend their day, morning doing climate, midday doing biodiversity, and afternoon doing climate. Of course not. They have one day, they have one family to feed, they have one opportunity to meet. And they actually do whatever they can to produce the food to live. So U.N. agencies, multilateral banks, and international organizations can actually adapt themselves. And when we say adapt, it doesn't mean only adapting what they are doing but the way they're funding and the way they are interacting with countries that are severely hit by droughts, by floods, by climate change affected by profound transformation of the economy and the way their communities, especially rural communities, are affected by all this. There was a day here during this COP focused on food systems. And it seems like this COP we've focused more on adaptation, even though funding for adaptation has started to go down since last year, but there's more of an effort to think about how we are integrating adaptation and resilience with the broader focus that has always been there for many years now on mitigation. I will comment on the reduction of funding, which is really bad news. Because you can do the mitigation that is required, and we should certainly do more mitigation and reduce carbon emissions, but the carbon that we have in the atmosphere will be there for the next 100 years. Therefore, we will continue to suffer. But if we were to stop today, which is unthinkable, even if we were to stop all emissions, we will still have to live with the consequences. So local communities will continue to suffer. So the reduction in funding on adaptation is absolutely bad news for humanity. It is absolutely clear that funding agencies as well as the private sector should adapt. As a business person, before I invest in my next activity on the ground, I will do some stress tests to see whether this is viable or not. Before I build the next airport, or the next railway, I will check whether or not that will resist the extreme weather that is likely to happen. Whether we like it or not, unfortunately, those countries that have not contributed much to the climate will have to adapt their own budgets because they cannot just wait until someone else can provide them with the financial resources that they need. They will have to adapt their own lifestyles. And unfortunately, the world is changing before our very eyes. And everybody will have to adapt in one way or another. Give us an example … where you've seen something really work, where someone has said, “We're going to take a longer-term perspective and invest differently in a way that makes the land sustainable.” First of all, communities are doing good work in adapting, no one is talking about them, and they are unsung heroes. There are governments that are doing a lot to improve their condition, but also the private sector. I have to say, sometimes we point fingers at the private sector but they are doing a lot in many ways, including agricultural companies, including food transport companies that are also reducing their emissions. …. So a lot of companies are doing very positive steps. But we have not yet reached a point where we should feel satisfied. So more needs to be done. If you have been following the negotiations for many years, a lot of progress has been made. Just three years ago, no one would have thought that a loss and damage fund would be established. Here we are — we have it now. We hope it will make a lot of difference. So some positive steps, but still a long way to go before we say yes, we have done something meaningful. Next year, you'll be in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for your COP. It gets less attention certainly than this COP. But when you think of the biodiversity COP that happened and all the success that happened there, what are we shooting for? What do you want to see come out of your COP in December next year? I want people to realize that when we talk about UNCCD COP, it’s actually about our food, it’s actually about what’s in our closets, it's actually about the water we drink, and the air we breathe. It's not about vegetation or trees or animals. It's about us as human beings, because we are the first ones that are creating the disruptions that we are seeing in the world today in terms of destroying ecosystems and having severe consequences on humanity. When we go to COP next year, we want people to understand we are talking about our [gross domestic product]. The GDP of the world is likely to be reduced by 50% if we continue to degrade the land. We should understand that we are talking about our natural capital. So we have to really be very clear that when you go to Riyadh in December 2024, you are coming to a UNCCD COP, but you are first and foremost coming to a COP that will be making decisions on land and on drought and how they interact with humanity.