Monika Stankiewicz, Executive Secretary of the Minamata Convention on Mercury, at the 71st GEF Council Meeting. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan, Jun 2 2026 (IPS)

On day 2 of the Global Environment Facility’s 71st Council Meeting, which focused on process and procedure, a clear message emerged: global environmental governance cannot afford fragmentation.

With at least six major multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) under its financial mechanism – the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD), the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), the Minamata Convention on Mercury, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and the emerging Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction – the GEF sits at the centre of a complex reporting architecture.

For many convention secretariats, reporting requirements have become increasingly difficult for countries, constrained by limited staffing and multilayered requirements. Calls for greater synergies, including simpler processes across conventions, have taken on new urgency.

“This is the year of three COPs – a great opportunity for us to create synergies,” said Asad Naqvi, representing the CBD, setting the tone for discussions.

A System Under Strain

Across conventions, similar challenges surfaced: fragmented reporting, misaligned data requirements, and duplication, especially for smaller secretariats and developing countries.

Monika Stankiewicz, Executive Secretary of the Minamata Convention on Mercury, highlighted the gap between global commitments and local realities while acknowledging GEF’s progress in integrating Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs). She pointed to artisanal and small-scale gold mining – one of the largest sources of mercury emissions – that often occurs in indigenous territories. Yet many affected communities remain unaware of how the issue is addressed under the convention. Without meaningful engagement, broader goals such as biodiversity conservation become difficult to achieve.

“If Indigenous Peoples are not adequately engaged in combating mercury pollution, even biodiversity goals will fall short,” she warned, calling for stronger integration across conventions.

Delegates at the 71st GEF Council Meeting debated how to remove fragmentation in the management of funding across at least six major multilateral environmental agreements. Stella Paul/IPS

The ‘Minefield’ of Reporting

The complexity of reporting was underscored by Dr Rolph Payet, Executive Secretary of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm (BRS) Conventions. Despite efforts to build synergies within the chemicals and waste cluster, reporting remains what he described as a “minefield”.

“We have one convention where reporting has started and others where reporting formats have changed; some stakeholders still prefer paper-based systems, while others want digital platforms – and they do not always share data,” Payet explained.

The result is a system that remains difficult for countries to navigate. Still, Payet struck a cautiously optimistic note, pointing to ongoing efforts to harmonise compliance mechanisms and streamline data collection.

“This is not something we should run away from,” he said. “We have a unique opportunity to bring our heads together and find ways to make reporting easier, more effective, and more useful for measuring impact.”

From Silos to Systems

For Naqvi and others, synergies go beyond administrative efficiency; they are essential for addressing interconnected global crises.

Synergies are not just about efficiency but addressing interconnected crises, says Naqvi. The Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is often viewed as a conservation blueprint.

“All these challenges – climate, biodiversity, land degradation, pollution – are interconnected,” he said. “The global financial landscape does not allow us to continue with siloed projects.”

He urged the GEF to leverage its role as a financial mechanism for multiple conventions to deepen integration. Existing coordination platforms, such as the Joint Liaison Group among the three Rio Conventions, could be expanded to include chemicals, waste, and emerging issues.

Equally important, he added, is shifting the focus from outputs to systemic change – understanding and addressing the economic drivers behind environmental degradation.

“We must not only fight the flames but also turn off the tap that fuels the fire,” Naqvi said.

Financing the Transition

Across conventions, the scale of investment required far exceeds available grant resources, creating an urgent need for innovative financing.

Stankiewicz highlighted the funding gap for mercury pollution and hazardous chemicals, noting that grants alone are insufficient. She pointed to blended finance – combining public, private, and sovereign capital – as a key pathway.

“Grants can catalyse,” she said. “They can crowd in larger investments and unlock development opportunities while addressing environmental challenges.”

According to her, emerging examples reflect this approach. For example, the GEF-supported PCB animation project not only reports on the destruction of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) but also on co-benefits such as emissions reduced through energy efficiency.

“That will be integration in practice. And I hope the implementation agencies will also join us on this important job,” Stankiewicz said.

Land, Drought, and Resilience

From the UNCCD perspective, synergies closely link to scaling investment and building resilience, particularly in vulnerable regions.

Cathrine Mutambirwa, Programme Coordinator at the UNCCD’s Global Mechanism, stressed the need to mobilise private capital and expand blended finance models beyond pilot initiatives. This is especially critical in drylands and drought-prone regions where financing remains limited.

She welcomed the proposed integrated programmes on drought and land restoration under GEF-9 as a timely response to country needs.

“These are precisely the kinds of cross-sectoral approaches that affected countries are asking for,” she said.

Mutambirwa also highlighted partnerships with multilateral development banks and regional institutions, showing how coordinated financing can bring together resources – including GEF, climate funds, and development banks – into cohesive programmes.

Speakers also stressed that integration must be inclusive, placing Indigenous Peoples, women, youth, and vulnerable communities at the centre and supported by accessible information and simplified systems.

“There has been too much fragmentation,” Naqvi of UNCBD acknowledged. “We need to ensure that our processes work for those who are custodians of biodiversity and natural resources.”

A Pivotal Moment

The Eighth GEF Assembly comes at a critical time. With multiple COPs scheduled in the same year and the GEF entering its ninth replenishment cycle (GEF-9), there is a rare alignment of political attention, financing, and institutional momentum.

Speakers were clear: this moment must not be missed.

Greater synergies in reporting, financing, and programme design are essential to reduce burdens and improve their impact.

If implemented effectively, such integration could transform global environmental governance from parallel efforts into a coherent system capable of addressing the world’s most pressing challenges.

As Naqvi put it, the opportunity is clear: to move beyond fragmentation and build a system where sustainability is not just a goal but a pathway to inclusive and resilient development.

The speakers revealed that UN agencies and conventions were cutting operational costs – through reduced travel and the use of technologies like AI. At such a time, they are expected to push for simpler reporting systems that align with tighter budgets, smaller teams, and growing workloads. It will be telling to see how the GEF-9 cycle reflects these constraints in both design and implementation.

Note: The Eighth Global Environment Facility Assembly is underway until June 6, 2026, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

This feature is published with the support of the GEF. IPS is solely responsible for the editorial content, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of the GEF.

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In Nairobi's Kibera, the largest urban informal settlement in Africa, girls and women wait their turn for the scarce water supply. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
SEVILLE & BHUBANESWAR, Jul 2 2025 (IPS)

While droughts creep in stealthily, their impacts are often more devastating and far-reaching than any other disaster. Inter-community conflict, extremist violence, and violence and injustice against vulnerable girls and women happen at the intersection of climate-induced droughts and drought-impoverished communities.

Five consecutive years of failed rain in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya brought the worst drought in seventy years to the Horn of Africa by 2023. In Somalia, the government estimated 43,000 excess deaths in 2022 alone due to drought-linked hunger.

As of early current year, 4.4 million people, or a quarter of Somalia’s population, face crisis-level food insecurity, including 784,000 people expected to reach emergency levels. Together, over 90 million people across Eastern and Southern Africa face acute hunger. Some areas have been enduring their worst ever recorded drought, finds a United Nations-backed study, Drought Hotspots Around the World 2023-2025 released today at the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4).

UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw noted that while drought is here and escalating, it demands urgent global cooperation. Photo courtesy: UNCCD

High tempera­tures and a lack of precipitation in 2023 and 2024 resulted in water supply shortages, low food supplies, and power rationing. In parts of Africa, tens of millions faced drought-induced food shortages, malnutrition, and displacement, finds the new 2025 drought analysis, Drought Hotspots Around the World 2023-2025, by the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the U.S. National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC).

It not just comprehensively synthesizes impacts on humans but also on biodiversity and wildlife within the most acute drought hotspots in Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Botswana, and Namibia), the Mediterranean (Spain, Morocco, and Türkiye), Latin America (Panama and the Amazon Basin) and Southeast Asia.

Desperate to Cope but Pulled Into a Spiral of Violence and Conflict

“The coping mechanisms we saw during this drought grew increasingly desperate,” says lead author Paula Guastello, NDMC drought impacts researcher. “Girls pulled from school and forced into marriage, hospitals going dark, and families digging holes in dry riverbeds just to find contaminated water. These are signs of severe crisis.”

Over one million Somalis in 2022 were forced to move in search of food, water for families and cattle, and alternative livelihoods. Migration is a major coping mechanism mostly for subsistence farmers and pastoralists. However, mass migration strains resources in host areas, often leading to conflict. Of this large number of displaced Somalis, many crossed into territory held by Islamic extremists.

Drought in a Sub-Saharan district leads to 8.1 percent lower economic activity and 29.0 percent higher extremist violence, an earlier study found. Districts with more months of drought in a given year and more years in a row with drought experienced more severe violence.

Drought expert and editor of the UNCCD study Daniel Tsegai told IPS at the online pre-release press briefing from the Saville conference that drought can turn into an extremist violence multiplier in regions and among communities rendered vulnerable by multi-year drought.

Climate change-driven drought does not directly cause extremist conflict or civil wars; it overlaps and exacerbates existing social and economic tensions, contributing to the conditions that lead to conflict and potentially influencing the rise of extremist violence, added Tsegai.

Extracting water from a traditional well using a manual pulley system. Credit: Abdallah Khalili / UNCCD

Though the effects of climate change on conflict are indirect, they have been seen to be quite severe and far-reaching. An example is the 2006-2011 drought in Syria, seen as the worst in 900 years. It led to crop failures, livestock deaths and mass rural displacement into cities, creating social and political stress. Economic disparities and authoritarian repression gave rise to extremist groups that exploited individuals facing unbearable hardships.

The UN study cites entire school districts in Zimbabwe that saw mass dropouts due to hunger and school costs. Rural families were no longer able to afford uniforms and tuition, which cost USD 25. Some children left school to migrate with family and work.

Drought-related hunger impact on children

Hungry and clueless about their dark futures, children become prime targets for extremists’ recruitment.

A further example of exploitation of vulnerable communities by extremists is cited in the UNCCD drought study. The UN World Food Programme in May 2023 estimated that over 213,000 more Somalis were at “imminent risk” of dying of starvation. Little aid had reached Somalia, as multiple crises across the globe spread resources thin.

However, al-Shabab, an Islamic extremist group tied to al-Qaida, allegedly prevented aid from reaching the parts of Somalia under its control and refused to let people leave in search of food.

Violent clashes for scarce resources among nomadic herders in the Africa region during droughts are well documented. Between 2021 and January 2023 in eastern Africa alone, over 4.5 million livestock had died due to droughts, and 30 million additional animals were at risk. Facing starvation of both their families and their livestock, by February 2025, tens of thousands of pastoralists had moved with their livestock in search of food and water, potentially into violent confrontations with host regions.

Tsegai said, “Drought knows no geographical boundaries. Violence and conflict spill over into economically healthy communities this way.”

Earlier drought researchers have emphasized to policymakers that “building resilience to drought is a security imperative.”

Women and Girls Worst Victims of Drought Violence

“Today, around 85 percent of people affected by drought live in low- and middle-income countries, with women and girls being the hardest hit,” UNCCD Deputy Executive Secretary Andrea Meza said.

“Drought might not know boundaries, but it knows gender,” Tsegai said. Women and girls in low-income countries are the worst victims of drought-induced societal instability.

Traditional gender-based societal inequalities are what make women and girl children par­ticularly vulnerable.

During the 2023-2024 drought, forced child marriages in sub-Saharan Africa more than doubled in frequency in the four regions hit hardest by the drought. Young girls who married brought their family income in the form of a dowry that could be as high as 3,000 Ethiopian birr (USD 56). It lessened the financial burden on girls’ parental families.

Forced child marriages, however, bring substantial risks to the girls. A hospital clinic in Ethiopia (which, though, it has outlawed child marriage) specifically opened to help victims of sexual and physi­cal abuse that is common in such marriages.

Girls gener­ally leave school when they marry, further stifling their opportunities for financial independence.

Reports have found desperate women exchanging sex for food or water or money during acute water scarcities. Higher incidence of sexual violence happens when hydropower-dependent regions are confronted with 18 to 20 hours without electricity and women and girls are compelled to walk miles to fetch household water.

“Proactive drought management is a matter of climate justice,” UNCCD Meza said.

Drought Hotspots Need to Be Ready for This ‘New’ Normal

“Drought is no longer a distant threat,” said UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw, adding, “It is here, escalating, and demands urgent global cooperation. When energy, food, and water all go at once, societies start to unravel. That’s the new normal we need to be ready for.”

“This is a slow-moving global catastrophe, the worst I’ve ever seen. This report underscores the need for systematic monitoring of how drought affects lives, livelihoods, and the health of the ecosystems that we all depend on,” said Mark Svoboda, report co-author and NDMC Founding Director.

“The struggles experienced by Spain, Morocco and Türkiye to secure water, food, and energy under persistent drought offer a preview of water futures under unchecked global warming. No country, regardless of wealth or capacity, can afford to be complacent,” he added.

Global Drought Outlook 2025 estimates the economic impacts of an average drought today can be up to six times higher than in 2000, and costs are projected to rise by at least 35% by 2035.

“It is calculated that $1 of investment in drought prevention results in bringing back $7 into the GDP lost to droughts. Awareness of the economics of drought is important for policymaking,” Tsegai said.

The report released during the International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA) event at the Saville conference aims to get public policies and international cooperation frameworks to urgently prioritize drought resilience and bolster funding.

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