Well-managed urban growth is key to preventing and reversing land degradation. This is nowhere more urgent than in drylands, where over 90% of the world's dryland settlements sit in developing regions and scarcity, erratic rainfall and groundwater over-extraction already threaten hundreds of millions of people.
At COP30 in Belém, the Global Water Operators’ Partnerships Alliance (GWOPA) of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) will co-organize an in-person session with the Ministry of Cities of Brazil and Mandí, highlighting the central role of water and sanitation in building climate resilience and protecting vulnerable communities.
Water is increasingly cited as the lifeblood connecting biodiversity, climate and land. At last year’s three UN Rio Conventions conferences – Biodiversity COP16, Climate COP29 and Desertification COP16 – water took central stage for sustaining ecosystems, tackling climate change and nurturing healthy soils.
In 1992, governments gathered at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro to discuss the interlinked challenges of climate, land and biodiversity loss. This summit was the origin of three separate global agreements known as the Rio Conventions: