The International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA)

In News: Launch of IDRA at the 27th Conference of Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) at Sharm El-Sheikh, along with 30 countries and 20 organisations.

About the IDRA:

• Launched by Spain and Senegal
• First announced by Spain at the 77th session of the UN General Assembly in 2022.
• Significance: there is no global convention for land, other than UNCCD, which mostly focuses on desertification.
• A ‘specific solution’ for the United Nations to the impacts of climate change and aims to move from emergency response to building long-term resilience.
• The mission of the alliance is to give political impetus to make the land’s resilience to drought and climate change a reality by 2030.
• Political commitments include a five million Euro (Rs 40.76 crore) seed fund by Spain.
• Kenya made a commitment to plant five billion trees in the next five years and 10 billion trees in 10 years.

• The alliance will also collaborate with other platforms, including the initiative launched by the United Nations Secretary-General and the World Meteorological Organization to achieve universal coverage of early warning systems and regional initiatives to reap the maximum benefits of working together on drought resilience.

Challenges of Drought:

• Drought represents the most serious hazard to livestock and crops in nearly every part of the world.
• It ranks among the greatest threats to sustainable development, especially in developing countries, but increasingly so in developed nations too.
• Recent episodes have shown that droughts are hitting more often and harder than before, up nearly by a third since 2000.
• Climate change is expected to cause more severe droughts in the future.
• Droughts have increased in frequency by 29 per cent since 2000, with around 55 million people affected every year, according to the latest’ Drought in Numbers’ report compiled by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
• The 2022 droughts in Europe, United States, Australia, Chile, the Horn and southern Africa, showed that no country or region is immune to their impacts.
• Drought-generated economic losses from 1998 to 2017 were about $124 billion (Rs 1,011.57 crore) across the world, not to mention the cost of human suffering and lives.

Source: Down to Earth

Previous Year Questions

Q.1) With reference to the Agreement at the UNFCCC Meeting in Paris in 2015, which of the following statements is/are correct? (2016)

1. The Agreement was signed by all the member countries of the UN and it will go into effect in 2017.
2. The Agreement aims to limit the greenhouse gas emissions so that the rise in average global temperature by the end of this century does not exceed 2°C or even 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
3. Developed countries acknowledged their historical responsibility in global warming and committed to donate $1000 billion a year from 2020 to help developing countries to cope with climate change.

Select the correct answer using the code given below.

1. 1 and 3 only
2. 2 only
3. 2 and 3 only
4. 1, 2 and 3