In 2013, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in collaboration with a number of UN agencies, international and regional organizations and key national agencies organized the High-Level Meeting on National Drought Policy (HMNDP) in Geneva from 11 to 15 March 2013. The theme of the HMNDP was “Reducing Societal Vulnerability – Helping Society (Communities and Sectors).” For more information please visit the WMO HMNDP web page.

10 years later, many drought management initiatives and partnerships have been created based on the 2013 conference. Significant progress has been made worldwide in shifting from a reactive, crisis-oriented, to a proactive, forward-looking approach to integrated drought management. However, we are seeing that, overall, drought risk is increasing in the world. Drought events are becoming more frequent and intense, vulnerable populations and ecosystems are underrepresented in management decisions, and often political attention and finance are lagging behind what would be needed to increase drought resilience globally.

The Drought Resilience +10 Conference, which will be held from 30 September to 2 October 2024 in Geneva, Switzerland (WMO Headquarters), is going to bring countries together to review progress and lessons learnt and to explore and define a joint way forward towards a drought-resilient world.

Goals of the conference:

• Reflect on successes and challenges of 10 years of drought risk management since 2013 to learn how to achieve drought resilience in the next decade
• Consolidate and plan jointly how drought resilience can be brought to scale to respond to the accelerating impacts of climate change in the next decade by applying systems thinking
• Work with political leaders to strengthen awareness, mobilize resources, prioritize drought and increase commitments to building drought resilience and to implement Integrated Drought Management

Drought Resilience +10  actively promotes the inclusion of youth and gender equality, which requires session organizers to have at least: 40% women participation in panels and 1 speaker under the age of 35.

The Drought Resilience +10 Conference will be fully hybrid. In-person and online participation will be possible.

For more information and media requests write us at: DroughtResilience10@wmo.int