Professor George Vlontzos represented the Laboratory at the 17th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP17) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on 17–28 August 2026 under the theme “Restoring Land. Restoring Hope.”
Speaking on the main stage in the framework of the PRIMA project DIONYSUS, he presented the project’s Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems (WEFE) Nexus approach to an audience of delegates from the 197 Parties to the Convention. The talk opened with the interconnected crisis facing agriculture — the sector consumes about 70% of the world’s freshwater, food production and supply account for more than a quarter of global energy use, and feeding 10 billion people by 2050 will require around 60% more food under tightening resource constraints — and presented how the DIONYSUS Demonstration Sites, including the Greek site in Karditsa, co-design and test Nexus-based adaptation solutions with local stakeholders.
COP17 brings together heads of state, ministers, international organisations, the scientific community, civil society and the private sector to forge solutions to desertification, land degradation and drought — the very pressures the WEFE Nexus approach is designed to address.
