Deltas- UNite: Urgent Call for Climate Action with a UN Convention for Conserving River Deltas (A Path to The Hague Event)

Sep 22, 2023 - Apr 30, 2024 | Institute for Environmental Diplomacy and Security, University of Vermont
Hybrid

A consortium of about a dozen organizations representing both global South and North has recently coalesced and been recognized by the UNGA to work towards setting up a new UN Convention on Conserving River Deltas (UNCCRD). As part of this global initiative, this "Path to The Hague" event series will consist of four hybrid events focused on engaging representatives of vulnerable communities from focal river deltas and scientists engaged in understanding the risks faced by delta communities, and will look at the urgent policy and governance actions needed to build integrative "highlands to oceans" approaches for conserving river deltas and building cooperation and peace in the face of rising sea levels and salt water intrusion in deltas in the face of global climate change

The worsening climate crises underscores the urgent need for accelerated efforts to substantially address the worsening impact of climate change on water resources that are leading to human migration especially among young people, water shortage to poverty, hunger and communal conflicts as well as new disease outbreaks. The river deltas are especially the epicenters of these crises both due to loss of freshwater from highlands and rising sea levels and saltwater intrusion from oceans. The UN can facilitate an international multi stakeholder platform to provide the urgently needed dialogue and transformative action. To be called “United Nations Convention on River Deltas (UN-CCRD)”, this platform will enable urgent action to address the impending future water challenges and looming global crises of food, conflict and freshwater shortage.

This is a game changing collaborative solution that will blend indigenous knowledge with science, coordinate government interventions across vertical and horizontal levels as well as enable a global network of community scientists. The UN-CCRD platform will resolve some of the existing and future concerns of the peaceful coexistence of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), South Asian and South-East Asian countries with shared trans-boundary water resources in the future. Also, it will help to mitigate the growing agitations of indigenous peoples and local communities including young people, women and elderly – mostly vulnerable to these cascading impacts.

The first Path to The Hague event on September 22nd 9AM-12 Noon ET will focus on bringing out community voices from river deltas across Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America and summary of scientific assessments of risk and security challenges facing deltas. The second event on October 20th 9AM-12 Noon ET will focus on policy and governance solutions to be embedded in the draft UN-CCRD. The third event will be organized from the UNFCCC COP28 meeting venue in Dubai (Nov 30-Dec 11, 2023) to discuss the policy actions embedded in the draft UN-CCRD. The fourth event will be organized in Spring 2024 to finalize the draft UN-CCRD for circulation among representatives of governments of participating delta countries, including but not limited to Nigeria, Egypt, DRC, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Netherlands, USA, Brazil and Canada.