Excellencies, colleagues and friends,
Welcome to the launch of a new UNEP report proposing a new Drought Resilience Capacity Index (DRCI).
My deep thanks to the European Commission for funding this research, and to the co-organizing partners who worked on its development: the European Commission Joint Research Centre, the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA), and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction.
Drought is a systemic, worsening crisis, causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damages each year. Public water supplies, agriculture, energy and livelihoods suffer deep and growing harm amidst intensifying climate change.
This is not an arid country problem. It is a global problem. Land degradation, desertification and drought already affect three billion people. But when nations build drought resilience, rather than scrambling to respond when disaster strikes, they can build peace and stability, and reduce hunger and poverty.
Building resilience must be informed by science. The science and data do exist. The problem is fragmentation. As this report shows, 30-50 drought-relevant indicators are directly tracked, and 100 more are indirectly tracked across six Multilateral Environmental Agreements. But there is no clear indicator on drought resilience.
This is why the DRCI could be useful. This proposed index is a self-assessment tool built around three dimensions: Anticipate, Prepare and Adapt. It has only nine indicators. It builds on existing data. It is designed to plug into Multilateral Environmental Agreement reporting. And it is envisaged as a complement to the UNCCD/IDRA International Drought Resilience Observatorys Drought Resilience Index.
This index could provide one clear, comparable score that could help countries see where their drought resilience capacity is strong, and where the gaps lie.
We at UNEP are now suggesting a pilot approach. We are keen to hear which countries want to engage further, and how the approach could better connect monitoring to the decisions made by ministries beyond environment, such as finance and planning.
The UN International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists 2026, championed by COP17 host Mongolia, and growing global attention to the need for healthy land and drought resilience, have built momentum.
I hope that we can all work together on the index, which is a clear response to Party needs for clearer and more coherent monitoring, and help to turn this momentum into practical action.
