IDRO Phase II Technical Showcase: Drought Resilience Index (DRI) and Country Case Studies - Action Dome, UNCCD COP17

Good morning.
Good morning, everyone.
We are about to start this session.
Welcome to the IDO Phase two Technical Showcase.
My name is Hind Waldman.
I am the Director of communication with the Yale Center for Ecosystems and Architecture.
We are meeting here today ahead of the official inauguration phase two of the International Drought Resilience Observatory, EGO, which will officially launch on the 25th of August next week Tuesday.
So today, we will look at what has been developed, hear directly from countries and partners involved, and gather your feedback for the next phase.
So let me begin with a simple and quick question.
How do we turn more drug data into better and earlier decision? We know that droughts are becoming more frequent and more severe.
They affect our food, our water, livelihood, ecosystems, and economies.
At the same time, we have more dry data than ever before, but the information remains scattered, difficult to understand, as well as difficult to use.
The challenge here is not simply having more data.
The challenge is turning the data into decision making.
Really, this is what we are trying to do with DRO.
Develop under IDR, together with UN CCD, ELC, as well as a global network of partners, ID creates a bridge between the science and policy.
It brings data, research, and country experience together to help countries answer these practical questions.
How resilient are we? Where are the gaps, and where should we act first? A quick brief word on IDO journey.
The idea really emerged from discussion back four years ago at ULCCD Cp 15.
At the time, the need became clear that a tool specifically designed to support the high level policymakers was needed.
Since then, we have launched DRO.
IDO was born at Rit Cop 16, Phase one, it was a prototype, and this time around, we have a working version, a Beta version that we are launching during this Cp 17.
Without further ado, I'd like to invite our IDRA co chair to formally open the session.
For this, I would like us to start with our first speaker, Colonel Babakarian.
He's the Director of Water, Forest, Hunting and Soil Conservation at Senegal Ministry of Environment and Ecological Transition, as well as the Israel Co chair Colonion.
The floor is yours Colonion.
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Mercy Boko, Colonel Baback, thank you so much for your remarks.
I'm now going to move on to Elsa Enriquez Alcalde, who is the Deputy Director General for Forest Policy and Desertification Control at Spain Ministry for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge and each are co chair as well.
Miss Enriquez the Fo is yours.
Thank you so much.
Good morning, colleagues.
It's a pleasure to be with all of you and especially with my colleague from Senegal as co chair of IRA.
It's a pleasure also to speak on behalf of Spain at this technical showcase of the second phase of the International Drug Resilience Observatory and welcome you all to share the progress made in the last two years of work.
One of the main pillars of IRA of the International Drought Resiliient Alliance that was launched by Senegal and Spain some years ago is knowledge sharing in line with this, IRA has supported the development of of the observatory, together with the UNCCD Secretariat le University, the European Commissions Joint Research Center, the World Metorological Organization, and many others committed partners.
And when we launched this first phase of IRA in CP 16, we shared a common ambition to provide decision makers with better information, stronger evidence, and practical tools to support shift from reactive crisis management to a proactive way to manage droughts in concrete.
Today we are taking an important step forward in making that vision a reality.
The second phase of FDR that we launch today will further strengthen the platform through a devolution of the first four pillared country case studies, including the Spanish one, and Ira will introduce new four case studies from Brazil, Mongolia, Peru, and the United States.
We truly thank all the countries that have participated with this case studies that will help to translate data into practical lessons to be adapted and replicated in different contexts.
Managers like our ministry, we do need this study case to plan in a better way our drug problems.
Spain's contribution to R is illustrated through the E River Basin.
This is the largest river basin in our country and broadly representative of Springs approach to water management.
Water planning in Spain is a legal mandate and constitutes the foundation of drought resilience.
This ab basin case highlights the importance of solid, continuously updated and data supported planning to increase drought resilience, as well as the potential of resilience indicators to improve decision making and support the integration into planning public policies.
It's our hope that R and then case studies may contribute to bridge the gap between knowledge and action by bringing together scientific evidence, local experience, and policy relevant information in a single platform.
We look forward to continuing our collaboration with all partners and we further develop this value instruments in the years ahead.
I would like to thank truly all the expert institution and countries that have contributed to this work, as well as those participating in today's event.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, miss Enriquez, and thank you, Colin Dion, for those opening remarks.
Now we're going to move on to the Id platform and to set the scene, we want to start with a video that will give you the full picture of Ira.
Thank you so much leading to financial losses exceeding $124 billion.
But the good news is that building drought resilience allows stakeholders to anticipate, prepare, and adapt to the impacts of drought.
Critical insights are emerging on drought resilience.
However, data and information remain fragmented and scattered, preventing access for a wide range of stakeholders.
That is why the International Drought Resilience Observatory, IR, is being developed a demonstration of a global platform under development by the UN CCD through the International Drought Resilience Alliance, IDR, in partnership with the Yale Center for Ecosystems and Architecture, ELC, and a growing network of countries and organizations.
The idea for IDR came from the International Drought Resilience Alliance, led by Spain, Senegal, and more than 70 countries and organizations.
Now, IDR brings the world drought resilience knowledge into one place.
Explore country profiles that show how countries are building resilience across three dimensions, anticipate, prepare, and adapt and four domains, the built environment, the natural environment, People and community and the economy, explore what's happening on the ground with case stories from Spain, Ebro Basin, to Saudi Arabia, Senegal, to Mongolia's integrated drought and it early warning system, just a few of a growing library spanning the globe.
Watch real time drought conditions unfold through satellite monitoring and trusted data from across the UN system.
And ask IdR KI, your intelligent guide to any question in plain language with answers grounded in verified data and knowledge.
IDR transforms scattered information into shared understanding and shared understanding into action.
Following the successful demonstration of Phase one, IDR Phase two launches at Cop 17 in Ulaanbato, Mongolia.
Still growing, still evolving, and shaped by the people who use it.
This release opens a platform to you to explore, to test, and to tell us what drought resilience needs next.
Join us, explore the platform, share your feedback, and help shape the future of drought resilience.
EDR, anticipate, prepare, adapt.
So with this, I'd like to introduce Edgar Gutierrez, who's the senior advisor of IDR and former Minister of Environment and Energy of Costa Rica.
Edgar will introduce to us the latest development on the IDR Phase two as well as going through how we have developed the drought resilience index.
Ed, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much, and good morning to all of you.
This is a very nice opportunity to let you know how we have developed the framework of the drought resilience index that has been the base for the developing of the drough resilience Observatory.
For some of us that have had the opportunity to be ministers or being in office with high responsibilities, It is very well known that we are not able to actually good management or good policy making if we do not have a very good idea how the forest is.
Most of the time, we are forced by the same nature of the position that we need to react very punctual, like just seeing the trees in the forest.
But when we lost the whole view of the forest, we might get lost by looking just trees and trees and trees and then turn ourselves in just firefighters.
The whole success of public policy and the success of very process of decision making that actually favors the majority of our population, we need to be very much aware of what's going on in the forest.
That is a very big challenge for anyone that could assist that process because then we need to work in a multidimensional world and we have to bring that multidimensional frame into just one or few single numbers that are called composite indices, which help us have an idea of what's going on in our subject matter.
One of these famous composite indices are GNP, for example, that has been overused for many years.
Another one is the Human Development Index, another one is the multidimensional vulnerability index, like that.
It's a very common wave and UN actually the Secretary-General has been having a very big call to go beyond GNP, for example.
Let's get new figures so these new figures can help us have a better idea of what's going on with the forest.
Well, the route resilience index is part of that family.
The whole intention is to reduce multidimensional situation into a composite index so that we can provide decision makers a good idea of what's going on in the forest unrelated, of course, with guard resilience.
Drought resilience, drought is a very important issue nowadays.
As you know, Europe is suffering drought.
80% of Mexico, for example, is under drought situation.
Co in my own region, Latin America, actually suffering from drought situation, Costa Rica, that is a tropical current.
We have plenty of water more so these days, that El Nino is affecting the Caribbean slope.
We have had a lot of rain.
But imagine a lot of rain so much that the water goes up to the waste of people in some communities.
But despite that, we are suffering drought in the Pacific Slope.
And that is a situation that we have to compensate when we talk about public policy.
So is becoming every time it's becoming a political issue.
Before it was seen as an environmental issue.
It was a matter of environmental ministers.
Nowadays, it's becoming a political issue and more so now, it's a subject that cabinets are talking and discussing as a serious problem because as you know very well know, it impacts economies and societies, very badly.
So having an index that gives that idea to policymakers seems like a very good idea.
That is why I asked us to put together a task force that developed this whole project that we are presenting to you today.
I just want to work with you.
I want to take you in the journey, how we are calculating the drought resilience index.
That's my own purpose for this talk today.
So as it was already mentioned in the next piece, as it was already mentioned in In the video, almost overview of the route resilience index is made by visualizing that resilience has to do with three main dimensions, anticipation, preparation, and adaptation.
That is not coming from our brain.
No, that is coming from the reports that have been produced by the science policy interface, many other documents that have been produced in the Secretariat of the USCCD.
What we are doing here is abstracting that concepts and putting them together.
Then By having these great dimensions that defines drought resilience, one thing before going on, drought resilience is totally different from drought.
We have already observatories about drought.
There is a lot of institutions that are monitoring drought and very good jobs and everything.
Here we are talking about drought resilience.
It's something broader, something that has to do with the whole society.
So having those three dimensions, We decided that in order to personalize this concept, we needed to apply those dimensions into some domains.
We found after many discussions in one workshop that we had at the university, we defined that we had to take these three dimensions and confront them with four domains, built environment, natural environment, people and community, and economy.
What we do here is we are building practically a three by four matrix that is that we call it the dashboard.
The dimensions, four domains and each of the cells, then we are going to have a particular situation where we want to provide information to decision makers about what action has to be taken.
Next.
So by having this already defined metric, then we need to go step forward and define what sort of indicators were going to be needed for each of the cells.
So the deca selection process is not an easy task.
Here, we're building a tool that has to comply with certain rules so that they can be useful for every country that is engaged into this.
And in this case, in our case, it's going to be useful for each member of the Era Alliance.
So here we had to face that situation.
How to select those indicators.
So we said, well, first we have to use sources that has an authority that have been proven that are trusty and then we need to develop a way of extracting those variables from there.
So We have that three by four metrics in each of these cells and said we had an exercise that was funded by using literature review and some other feedback from experts.
So what issues are related, for example, to anticipation in built environments.
We define certain issues.
And then with those issues, those issues helped us to go beyond and go to global databases, which has publicly available data, just to see which of the variables are very much relevant to the issues that we define for each of the cells of that matrix.
At the end of the day, we have to use sometimes the artificial intelligence and some other times we use another mathematical algorithms that are there so that we can go through the available global datasets so that we can extract those variables.
Then next, we have already identified some variables.
Then we need to start talking about how we are going to construct the index.
Of course, by doing that, then we would have, as you can imagine, variables with different units.
So we are going to combine or aggregate apples with bananas and strawberries.
It's not possible.
So we had to put everything with the same units and then we use we thought about this problem of re scaling the variables, which transforms each of the variables in unit let indicators, common scale so that we can aggregate them.
Then we have to think about weighting, and then we have to think about the aggregation method.
How we are going to combine all these variables so that the combination, the aggregation could be meaningful for the method that we want to construct.
Next, One of the characteristics that this process must have is that the indicators or these new Rig sccale variables, they have to go 0-1.
It is very I think it's very understandable that it had to go two to one.
We are very much used to see those kind of figures, it goes 0-1, then if it is 0.5, we are in the middle of the way.
If it is one, we are great, or we are zero, we are very poor.
So we define then that they have to go to 021.
We rescale them by using the Min max procedure that is the same procedure that is used by the Human Development Index, the multidimensional vulnerability index, some of the indices that UN has been building, so there's nothing new on this.
And the minmax, this procedure, what takes is all the values for one variable, all the values that we have available for every country and every year.
And then we use that data to build the rescaling procedure.
We have to agree that the direction of the variables have to be the same.
Of course, the greater the value, the more resilient the country is.
The lower the less resilient the country is, and then we have to use decision rules about what to do in particular situations.
Next, We had also to take care of um um of taking rid of those outliers.
Those figures sometimes in the variables are too high or too low, and then we decided to use that, um, That definition of the formula that is, as you know, the mean plus minus three standard deviation would give you an approximation of 99.7% of the data are going to be within those boundaries.
Then we just numbers greater than those boundaries are just kept.
If it goes beyond one, it's going to be one, if it goes beyond zero, it's going to be zero.
That is one of the part of the methodology that we we followed.
Then comes the aggregation itself and with the weighting strategy.
Next please.
How do we aggregate these? Then we say, Well, for each of these cells, each of the interactions between dimensions and domain in each of these cells.
I don't care much about what variables are going to be there by the sake of the variables because what we just want is some variables that could help us give an idea about the situation particular to the meaning of that cell.
Substitution of variables is allowed.
Because if we use substitution, we could use variable A or variable C or variable D depending on which is more available for every country.
Substitution is allowed, then we say, well, we are going to aggregate those using the arithmetic mean.
But then we go beyond that and we have to aggregate domains and dimensions and the combination of them, then we say, Well, here we have to be careful because we are talking about resilience, we don't want a very good result in one of the variables, mass the impact of another variable that has a very low value.
So we have to use a different sort of mean.
So we decided to use the geometric mean, which actually, you know, as it says in the screen, it avoids ing excellent performance in one area, hide serious weakness in another.
So that is the way we are aggregating the rescale variables.
Then we use these values, then we aggregate, we have the cell arithmetic mean, then we aggregate these values, this means by using geometric mean across dimensions and across domains.
Then at the end, we aggregate all of them, and we have the drought resilience index.
Next, So by doing this, we think that the DRI actually translate complex multidimensional indicator data into the decision ready scores.
This structured evidence layer enables natural planners to understand drought resilience across different domains without navigating raw datasets.
That's the whole thing.
We don't want people to spend too much time going to raw data databases and is very cumbersome and sometimes time consuming.
Here we are providing a way of having an idea how the forest is by just looking one or two or three composite indices so that they can have an idea what's going on.
But then analyzing domain provides an indicator level driver, the platform, identifies specific priority areas for policy action.
This ensures that interventions are targeted toward the most critical resilience gaps in the built and natural environment.
The whole thing here is we're building here a system where the whole idea is to provide policymakers with possibility of seeing flags, a red flag, a green flag or a yellow flag.
We are not here saying you have to do this.
We are saying listen guys, you look into this because there is a problem here.
We are looking at, for example, a low score for built environment within anticipation.
We are going to say to the policymakers, listen, there is a problem here.
We better act and bring the experts and think about what is going on so that we can increase the resilience of our country in this component.
That's the whole thing.
I mean, we are not providing the causes or recommendations for, but just raising a flag saying, Hey, guys, look, don't go beyond this point because we need to tackle this problem here.
Let's think about it.
How to improve the situation of our country related to that.
With that, we are thinking that we are helping organize The resources available for a minister, for example, in order to go beyond but it has to do with related to facing a of rough or extreme event like a route.
Next, So I think with this, we are providing a layer of information for decision maker that is evidence based.
And this is an important thing.
We are not inventing, we are just putting a situation, a particular situation that is being portrayed by using data to policymakers saying, listen, guys, this is the situation, now we need to act.
And there is also we have thought of how we can use this in real life, and we are going to talk about that in the next side events.
But the main point is that with the DRI, we are not also providing a way of aggregating many data and providing policymakers with a score that is going to give you some ideas about how the situation of the forest is.
But also, we are With this, we are providing a framework for developing the route resilience observatory that is beyond the DRI, it provides more information, more substantive information about route resilience from the countries and also to the general public on this important matter.
With this, I think I finished.
Okay.
Thank you, Edgar, for this insightful presentation.
We have seen how IGRO measure resilience.
Now let's spend some time looking at the different features that exist under IDR.
For this, I'd like to call in my colleague, Alejandra Acevedo, who's the research scientist with ELC, and Alejandra will present some of the key features of the platform, Alejandra.
Thank you.
Thank you, everyone for being here today and for the opportunity to present the key features of the platform.
I'm going to take you through a quick overview of the different key features and also talk very briefly about the methodology that we developed for building this multidimensional drought resilience framework.
As we were saying, drought resilience is the system's capacity to anticipate, prepare, and adapt to drought and those are the three dimensions that we are using.
The information is emerging on how to become resilience to the effects of drought, and we know that the data and the information are fragmented and scattered.
So our goal is to connect data and science with meaningful actions.
IDR is organized around these three dimensions, anticipate, prepare, and adapt, and the methodological overview is around these three dimensions.
So for anticipation, we are identifying and forecasting drought risk and vulnerabilities early.
The preparation dimensions is around building readiness and institutional capacity to handle events.
And for adaptation is adjusting systems and behaviors for long term resilience.
Then these dimensions, they are organized or we're using four key domains that are the built environment, natural environment, people and community, and economy.
We developed a systematic literature review using white literature and gray literature.
This is still on process, and we're working with a big team of researchers with the Michelle Bell Labs and TLC.
For the white literature, we're analyzing a more than 8,000 white literature peer review papers from two different databases, pus and was, and we're using queries related to each one of the dimensions plus the domains and the relevant issues.
This is allowing us to be super transparent.
We're not inventing all the indicators, but each indicator can be tracked to the original source.
For the gray literature, we have scanned more than 1,700 reports coming from policy comments and also searching in institutional repositories.
This gives us also other type of information that are not captured in wide literature.
It's complementing the literature.
This is showing the matrix and the matrix is systematized into the three dimensions, anticipate, prepare and adapt and domains, built environment, natural environment, people, and community economy, plus the relevant issues, and also mapping all the indicators to all of them.
This is the drought resilience framework.
Edgar was explaining before that the drought resilience index comes from this framework and I During different workshops with expert criteria, we decided which one of the indicators were going to be used for building this index.
These are the key features of the tool of the platform.
We have the drought resilience indicators, interactive maps, and data visualizations, the D KI, that is an AI assistant, the country profiles and the case stories, the latest news and alerts, and created resources.
This is the landing page and after the meeting, we're going to invite you to go to see the platform live in the beam lab.
But from this landing page, we can access and have an overview of different types of sections of the platforms.
We can go to the country profile, we can go to the case stories, and also analyze some specialized layers that are also available for different countries.
The live data.
Then this is the country profile.
We have right now 19 countries in this Beta version of the platform, and they are organized per region, then we have the overview of the country.
We have a quick insight of the country profile.
Then, for example, here we're seeing Mongolia.
We have the summary of Mongolia and we also have the drought resilience index that is already applied to the country.
We have to anticipate, prepare and adapt, and here we can see the value and where the country needs to work or where.
This is meant to be a diagnosis tool.
We have also the analytics section and we can go more into the dimension.
For example, in the anticipate dimension, we can see where we need to work in the natural environment, environment economy or people and community, and for each one of the dimensions.
Then we have the insights of the drought resilience approach and also live and monitoring the indicators.
Then we have also developed the case studies.
We are working now with eight different curated case stories.
Mandy is going to explain that after.
Here we can see, for example, in Africa and we have one of the case studies specifically for Senegal.
And this is open for having more countries in the platform too.
Then here we can see Saudi Arabia and we can go through different sections for each case study.
We have a template that is used for each of the countries and Mandy will explain it.
We have the case stories we can access through this globe and go to each one of the case studies.
And an important section of the case study is the drought resilience index that is applied.
So we selected from the DRI, which are the indicators that are more related to each curated case study.
With that, we are doing the D analysis.
And we can also go to the insights.
This is the DR KI, that is an agent that is trained on the back end of the platform.
We are adding all the white literature and the gray literature and also the news.
Anyone depending on the profile that has been registered in the platform can access and ask different questions and the agent is going to give us the information that is asked.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you so much, Alefandra for this great overview of the platform.
Now, I would like to bring in our country partners for a conversation about these case stories.
I'd like to call in on Elza Enriquez.
Elza please, if you can just join us.
Elsa is the Deputy Director General of Forest Policy and desertification Control at Spain Ministry for the ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge and Idra co chair, thank you so much.
Sana Diop, please.
Sena is the advisor to the Minister of Environment and Ecological Transition of Senegal.
Thank you, Sena, and Mendy Pretorius.
Mandy is a postdal associate with LLC.
Before starting, we would like just to set this conversation with a quick video if we can just start there, please.
Alone can't tell.
The International Drought Resilience Observatory, IDO, is a global platform under development by the UN CCD through the International Drought Resilience Alliance to bring the world's drought resilience knowledge into one place, and at its heart, case stories documenting how real countries face real droughts and what the world can learn from them, eight countries, aid curd journeys, every kind of drought landscape on Earth.
Every case story follows the same structure from context, challenge to insights and lessons learned.
But here's what makes it powerful.
One journey means something different to everyone who takes it.
A policymaker, a scientist, a member of the public, same story, three kinds of value.
Let's take the journey.
For the policymaker, the drought resilience framework turns the story into a structure three dimensions, anticipate, prepare, adapt across four domains, built environment, the natural environment, people and community, and the economy.
Policymakers can see what Saudi Arabia actually did, what worked, what didn't, and what can be carried home into a national draft plan.
Then ask IDR KI to summarize it for the briefing room.
That's the first kind of value decisions.
For the scientist, every claim in the story is traceable.
The methodology is open.
The data behind the story can be interrogated, tracked across 30 years of trends, compared across countries and connected to ongoing research.
That's the second value, evidence.
For the public, there are no charts to decode.
Spin the globe, find your country and see in seconds whether conditions are worsening or improving.
Ask EO KI a simple question.
Has this happened before? Then get a plain language answer with practical resources for what to do next.
That's the third value, understanding.
Because resilience is only built when the public understands, the scientists can verify, and policymakers can act.
Eight stories are just the beginning.
EDRO K stories are growing, and your country's story could be next.
Work with IDR to document your drought resilience journey and share what you've learned with the world.
Explore the stories, share your own.
EDR, anticipate, prepare, adapt.
Thank you.
Maybe I'm going to start here with Mendy.
Mendy, you work very closely with the countries here to develop those case stories.
So if you can, please take us behind the scenes and tell us what does the development process actually look like and what goes into turning a country drought resilience story into something that is clear and usable for others.
Thank you.
The significance of the case story is really to contextualize the drought resilience index and drought resilience framework within how within a regional to national level, multiple scales of type of case story.
The case story very importantly is curated with particular country case story representatives.
In the case of Senegal, we work very closely with the Ministry of Environment and Ecological Transition, with the Ebro Basin Confederation in terms of the Spain case story, as well as the Center for Climate Change, with the National Center of Meteorology for Saudi Arabia.
Um, varying between scales of the national to more base and level stories, for instance, with EPR.
And what's important is that the case story is curated and it's defining how the drought resilience indexes are matching to different priorities with each case story.
For instance, working with Sara, um, the first step is sharing a structure that is a template which can be inputted with different data that then is a structure of everything from governance structures to types of data available to bodies and organizations to what the critical priorities are.
And then brought into the case story across several different sections that allow for a user or someone a type of profile, be it a public viewer to a specialist such as a policymaker or an expert to engage with different sections that are structured around, as you can see on the slides, context, challenges, drought resilience framework, monitoring measurement, data decision support, actions, and insights and lessons learned.
Now, what's very important is the takeaway section with actions and lessons learned.
I'd like to give the floor to Sana to maybe talk about how we work together.
Thank you.
Good morning, everyone.
Thank you for inviting me at this very nice session, launching this very important work we did together for, I think since two years now and today is for me, a very good occasion to talk about this adventure on Israel.
So, yes.
Mandy mentioned that we worked together some months ago, and we had very proactive sessions that was very useful for us in Senegal talking about how we want to showcase the our successes, but also the challenges we are facing in terms of building the stories, but also making decisions, very good decisions.
That was very nice working with Mandy because she was developing that template.
And then from there, she was really willing to explain to Senegal team how we can work together, showcase data, and what we want to showcase exactly for Senegal because the realities are different in between countries and it's important for Senegal to show the realities on the ground For decision makers as she mentioned.
That was great, that was nice, but that was really important to understand how it's working on the platform and what exactly Senegal government want to showcase in these trophies too.
So thank you for that.
Very nice work.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Senegal is exemplary how people and community and economy are at play, especially with integration of community participation in many of the, for instance, bushfire campaigns or educational activities that link to the DRI, especially focusing on the domains people and community and economy.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mandy.
Thank you so much, Sena.
I think the key takeaway is essential in here for each of the case stories we always have for key takeaway.
Now, let me just come to our representative from Spain, misses Elques.
We worked with the Spanish team as well because as we saw in this platform, every single case stories are actually curated, so we're working with the countries themselves.
So how can the Spanish case story as an example, support more coordinated decisions across, let's say, water, agriculture, or ecosystems.
Can you elaborate on that, please? Yes.
Thank you so much for your question.
Okay.
The Spanish study case that we have work and analyze within the International Drug Resilient Observatory, give us a new perspective because, of course, in Spain, we already have data about our river basins and so on.
But these study case give us new indicators and thresholds and new lessons learned and updated data, technical and scientific analyzed data, and it's This all the information is in a very accessible platform, as you can see, because Alejandra has shown us, and this is very friendly platform and we can share from our Ministry of ecological Transition with the other partners which are working in another units in ministries and in a daily basis, it's not very easy to communicate with them.
For planning from a multi sectoral view that is needed to plan our ecosystem, our agricultural systems, our forest systems, and we have to work together.
This study case is going to help us to share the information from a technical and scientific point of view.
To update our planning system for drug resilience in Spain.
It is, of course, very useful.
If you let me, there is another added value for us because having in this platform study cases from another countries is also useful for us because we can learn from similar ecosystems.
Great.
Thank you so much.
Just a quick question, a follow up for Spain and Senegal, if it's okay.
How could we perhaps make case stories more useful to policymakers? You did mention that it's a friendly tool platform.
Could you perhaps give us a little bit of advice as we see this platform is still on the Beta version, so we are trying to collect as much feedback to further improve it.
In your opinion, can you perhaps give us a little bit of advice on that? As I have said, it's a very friendly platform, and this is very useful to policymakers.
But we can work widely, maybe in amplifying new countries because this is a very easy way to reach more policymakers at international level.
But also from our point of view, is very important to have very executive documents with lesson learned that helps policymakers and also it is useful to have the perspective from the local people, from the affected people, from the regional people and their problems.
Maybe IR can work on that issue.
Thank you so much.
Sena, do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah.
Thank you.
For Senal perspective, I think the value of this case story is that it brings together evidences, national priorities and realities also on the ground.
I think what could be, therefore, a done is that we go beyond that stories and from there we can have very strong commitments like having the resilience we are looking for.
For the minister, as a climate specialist, as a climate expert, he's really keen on how to have the right decisions for communities.
I think it's important that these dimensions that are already reflecting for Senegal are introduced or a now going into concrete actions.
So yes, for Sega, this is a real opportunity to ensure that evidences we are generating is are connected to what is happening at the local level.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Santa.
Thank you so much for our speakers.
This is great and we're hoping to collect more countries so we can showcase also the resilience inside of this platform.
Thank you so much.
So I We have heard why IGO was created.
We have seen the drought resilience Index.
Now, I would like to call in on our partners, three of the partners that have been there with us from the beginning.
Andrea Torti, who's the senior scientist at the European Commission Joint Research Center.
Valentin H, sorry, Valentin, Senior Water and climate specialist at GWP and Danielle Segai who's the program officer at the UNCCD.
Thank you so much, Andrea Valentin and Danielle.
You have been in this journey from the beginning when we started at Yale University discussing this methodology first workshop, then we were lucky enough to be invited by Andrea at the Joint Research Center, where we did our second workshop with all of the partners of Israel.
I'm going to begin with three questions.
And first question to you, Andrea, from the early methodology, workshop of the platform we see today.
What do you believe has been the most important evolution of IDO and where do you see the greatest opportunity to strengthen it further? Thanks for this question.
I think it has been indeed a great journey that started as you said a couple of years ago at Yale and continued.
We have seen that I think the big achievement has been to translate these, let's say, theoretical concept into something concrete that can be quantified.
Based on these three main, let's say, components that can be adapted to the specificities of each reach each country.
This has been, I think the big achievement to start indeed concretely design something that can be assessed and can be measured and monitored.
Of course, when it comes to what comes next, what are the challenges? I think there is, of course, a long way to go in the sense that we need to make sure that these drought resilience index and the TRO overall will be globally applicable, meaning look for data that can be used, but also make sure that it can be You know, adapted following also the ecostom evolution when it comes both to the country's conditions, the country's action, but also the evolution of the Azt itself because when it comes to drought, we have been observing an increasing, you know, tendency towards more severe, more persistent, more recurrent events, and these must be then considered when it comes to also the resilience.
I think that would be the main aspect to be done considered in the evolution and in the first phase of the Ira development.
Thank you, Andrea.
I'm going to come to you, Valentin, and what role could Ira play in strengthening country's capacity to prepare for drought before a crisis begin? Yes, thanks a lot for the invite and yeah, thanks a lot that I could really accompany this journey of IR, I think, from the very early days.
And I think the very strength that IDR really brings is the resilience, this focus on the resilience and the information on the resilience because this is really a gap that countries currently don't have that a normal drought observatory doesn't have.
So I think I when it comes to these three time horizons, which we usually look at when we speak about drought management, we have the long time risk management, we have the preparedness phase when we are aware that a drought might happen, and then we prepare, and then we have the response time frame.
Of course, when we look on this resilience, this information is very much needed to really decrease and mitigate the drought risk on the long term.
And therefore, I think this kind of diagnostic that Ira is providing and can provide and will be even strengthened will be a very, very useful tool for countries to really identify where are the gaps, where our vulnerabilities, where do we need to where do we need to invest? And the you are aware that we were always speaking about proactive drought management.
Now we are even speaking about prospective drought management.
We need to be aware of the risk.
What we are doing should not create new risks.
I think for this kind of thinking, a tool like R can be very essential to design a system that's really fit for purpose.
Great.
Thank you so much, Valentin.
Danielle.
Danielle, who also been there from the beginning.
Danielle, how can IO, in your opinion, become part of policy and planning and not simply another source of information because we've seen so many information out there.
Can you let us know, please? Thank you very much Hint for this very interesting question.
As someone who has been following on the work of the UN CCD parties trying to really look into how they can achieve drought resilience, First of all, I think it's very important that we connect data to decisions, but decisions to implementation.
So the drought resilience index It's not about getting the numbers correct, but it's about getting the direction, and this is what we have been missing.
I think it's very important that anything that you cannot measure you cannot manage.
So at the end of the day, I think this simplicity of this platform where countries can really look into where they are heading to, and this is what has been missing with the countries because every country is trying to really look into drought resilience from their own perspective.
Of course, it is still agile definition, but at least they have these dimensions of anticipate, then you prepare, and then you adapt.
I think these three dimensions, the consistency of it with all the four areas of work to look into will help us countries to come together and we are going to have a targeted approach towards drought resilience because if I compare drought to, for example, land degradation neutrality, land degradation neutrality in the SDGs, we know how to measure it.
There are three indicators.
Of course, there are also three indicators now for drought.
So I think this is very important and the signal that it sends to countries is also very important, and it will be very well taken up because now I'm in the middle of the negotiations on drought and this DRI I think will help them to see where they can look into.
So definitely it will be very well received and timely as well, I would say.
Thank you.
So Danielle, what would you say should be our next priority with Israel? Where should we start? Well, I think it's very important to first bring it into the country's awareness that we need to test it.
I always say participation is ownership.
Diop is telling us about the journey that she has taken with Mony for example.
If countries know about it, if they participate in getting this DRI getting structured, I think they should make sure that they are part of it.
Once they are part of it, I think this is going to be a success.
Let's try to involve them as much as possible.
Let's try to get more countries involved in this piloting.
Once we have reached that stage, I think this is going to be a success, I believe.
Thank you, Danielle.
Can I bring the same question to you, Valentin and Andrea quickly to close if you can also tell us what should be the next step with Israel.
Yeah, thanks, hint.
Of course, there is a broad thing.
I think there was so much progress in the past few months that I think to continue with that will already be a very big achievement.
But I think where it could be very much strengthened is if we bring in more of this policy information from the countries to understand really the vulnerabilities around that aspect as well because I think that's crucial, that's often overlooked, especially in all the when we are focusing on the environment and these kind of physical indicators, but really to understand if a country is prepared and resilient to drought is a lot about how they are coordinated between the different sectors.
How is a drought plan established, these kind of things.
I think this is a very difficult information to get.
But I think with this UN CCD and the background of Ira and with the countries in the background, this is a very good starting point and if not a tool like I, whoever could get this information.
I think there is a big achievement to be made.
Thank you, Valentin, Andrea.
Yeah.
Well, first, Daniel and Valentin on saying that indeed counter engagement and will be important in the follow up, but also to test based on past data, past experience, the effectiveness of Vt and these measures to indeed characterize the resilience.
Then finally, I think if we really look at the long term evolution, I would expect also to bring in the dimension on what comes into what comes for the future, meaning if we look into projections, how country is projected to become more or less resilient and bringing this dimension will be important challenging, but very important, I would say.
Great.
Well, thank you so much for being part of this journey and for all of your contribution to IDR.
We can do this with you and your experience.
I'd like to finish by thanking everyone, all of our speakers, partners, and participants today.
Thank you so much and if time permits, please join us in the Beam lab, which is behind to learn more about ID.
Thank you very much.
Yeah.
We would like to call in all of the panelist speakers, please.
Family picture.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.