Dr Raquel Agra, Deputy Head of Nature-Based Solutions at UNEP-WCMC, explains how a new report on global drought hotspots underscores the urgent need for action – and why we should view nature as an ally in this.

Drought is fast becoming one of the most pressing societal and environmental challenges of our time. A new report by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), Drought Hotspots Around the World 2023–2025, highlights the increasing severity, frequency and geographic spread of droughts worldwide.

The report identifies a broad swathe of regions as drought hotspots – from the Horn of Africa and the Middle East to the Mediterranean, South Asia and Central America. These regions are facing acute water shortages, crop failures, population displacement and rising food insecurity.

Drought is no longer a seasonal anomaly. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2024 was the warmest year on Earth since records began, and temperatures continue to rise. The impacts of climate change, combined with ever-increasing pressures on land and water resources, are making drought events more frequent and more devastating across the globe.

A persistent crisis

As someone from Portugal, a country already experiencing significant impacts of climate extremes, I am deeply struck by the scale of human suffering and environmental damage presented in the report. Over 90 million people across eastern and southern Africa are facing acute hunger. In Zimbabwe, thousands of cattle died from thirst and starvation and the 2024 corn crop was down 70 per cent on the previous year’s levels, which saw the price of maize doubling. Meanwhile, the Mediterranean has been hugely impacted by water shortages, with Morocco reaching a 57 per cent water deficit in January 2024.

Drought exposes and exacerbates underlying social, environmental and economic vulnerabilities. Its impacts are far-reaching and long-term: for example, when faced with uninhabitable conditions and food and water shortages, communities are often forced to migrate, which has knock-on effects for health and education.

As the report highlights, the impacts of drought take a disproportionate toll on women and children – in eastern Africa, there has been an increase in the number of child marriages, as desperate families seek dowries that will help them survive. In Ethiopia this practice almost doubled, despite the practice being illegal.

Growing momentum for action

The UNCCD is calling for urgent, coordinated global action to enhance drought resilience. Key strategies include early warning systems, sustainable water management and community engagement. The UNCCD advocates for increased investment in green infrastructure – according to its Economics of Drought report, each USD invested in ecosystem health yields an estimated USD 10 in return. This could include initiatives such as reforestation, watershed protection and sustainable grazing.

The 16^th Conference of the Parties to the UNCCD (COP16), held in Saudi Arabia in December 2024, marked a major milestone. With the theme ‘Our Land. Our Future’, it was the largest-ever UNCCD conference, convening its 197 Parties and record numbers from civil society, private sector, youth and Indigenous groups. Key outcomes included:

• USD 2.15 billion pledged through the Riyadh Global Drought Resilience Partnership;

• the launch of the World Drought Atlas, a data-driven tool to inform policy;

• the creation of the International Drought Resilience Observatory, an AI-enabled open-access platform that aims to connect science with policy.

These developments built on the sixth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-6), where countries adopted a resolution to strengthen global efforts against desertification, support land restoration and scale up drought resilience.

Critical COPs in the Amazon and Mongolia

This year, Brazil will host the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP30 in the Amazon. This region is reeling from climate-induced droughts: in 2023 and 2024, record-low river levels led to mass die-offs of fish and endangered species, disrupted transportation and threatened water supplies for hundreds of thousands. If deforestation and fires escalate, the Amazon risks shifting from a carbon sink to a carbon source, threatening global climate stability.

With the Paris Agreement reaching a critical implementation phase, COP30 must be a turning point for more ambitious forest and land-use strategies. This is essential not only for mitigation, but also for climate adaptation, especially in the face of worsening droughts.

For the UNCCD, the next critical phase will occur next year at COP17 in Mongolia, where a legally binding drought framework must be finalized – and the world will need bold investment to deliver on the global land restoration goals.

Working with nature as a way forward

At UNEP-WCMC, we support the mission of the UNCCD through technical expertise and evidence-based solutions. Our team contributed to the landmark report, Investing in Land’s Future: Financial Needs Assessment for UNCCD, launched at COP16. It found that land restoration could generate up to USD1.8 trillion in annual returns, delivering as much as USD 8 in benefits for every dollar invested through increased food production, resilience to drought and climate impacts, and improved ecosystem services.

At UNEP-WCMC, we view tackling land degradation as a unifying thread in the fight against biodiversity loss, climate change and poverty. Nature-based solutions, grounded in science and equity, offer a transformative pathway toward a more resilient future.

We were recently active in the EU’s REXUS Project, working with partners in five drought-prone regions in Europe and Latin America to build a business case for nature-based solutions as tools to ensure water, food and energy security.

Innovative nature-based solutions are already showing promising results around the world. One example is the Great Green Wall in the Sahel Region (Africa), an initiative to restore degraded landscapes and combat desertification across 8,000km in 11 countries. By 2030, the aim is that 100 million hectares of land will be restored, sequestering 250 million tonnes of carbon, creating 10 million jobs and providing food and water security.

What’s needed now is other initiatives that can deliver change on a scale comparable to that offered by the Great Green Wall. Local successes must be matched by global ambition.

These drought-driven crises are stark reminders of how interconnected the global environmental agenda is – linking biodiversity loss, climate change and land degradation, as addressed by the three Rio Conventions (the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UNFCCC and the UNCCD). Aligning action across these conventions is essential to strengthen resilience and prevent the kind of devastation that is illustrated so starkly in the new report.

We need to stop seeing nature as just a victim of climate change – it is also our most powerful ally.

Main image: Adobe Stock