Launch of World Drought Atlas Calls for Radical Action to Reduce Risks
By Sharon Atieno
As global leaders gather in Saudi Arabia for the 16th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP16), the unveiling of the World Drought Atlas is a wake-up call for urgent action at all levels to manage and mitigate drought risks.
About 55 million people are directly impacted by drought annually. Estimates show that by 2050, the situation will worsen with three in four people being affected.
While drought risk is growing worldwide, including in regions not traditionally associated with droughts, the impacts are not felt evenly. Low-to-middle-income countries are often more vulnerable to drought and face greater social impacts.
In 2022 and 2023 alone, 1.84 billion people, nearly one in four worldwide, were affected by drought, with about 85 % of them in low and middle-income countries. Despite the scale of the threat, drought risk management is underfinanced, which limits the deployment of policies and actions.
Through dozens of maps, infographics, and case studies, the World Drought Atlas by UNCCD and the European Commission Joint Research Centre, illustrates how drought risks are interconnected across sectors like energy, agriculture, river transport, and international trade and how they can trigger cascading effects, fueling inequalities and conflicts and threatening public health.
Co-produced with Cima Research Foundation (Italy), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (The Netherlands), and the UN University Institute for Environment and Human Security (Germany), its publication comes as UNCCD’s 197 Member States, negotiate how to build humanity’s resilience to harsher droughts.
The Atlas underscores the need for national drought plans and international cooperation to keep communities, economies, and ecosystems afloat in the face of harsher events. Additionally, it offers guidance for proactive and prospective drought management and adaptation across sectors and governance levels.
According to Ibrahim Thiaw, UNCCD Executive Secretary, the Atlas provides decision-makers with a systemic perspective on drought risks and impacts, illustrates how risks are interconnected across sectors and offers guidance on proactive and prospective drought management and adaptation.
“Importantly, it also urges an inclusive approach by, for example, democratizing water governance and forging partnership with the stewards and caretakers of the world’s vast land and rich biodiversity,” he said, noting that It is vital to place those who actively manage and care for land and water at the centre of all discussions and actions, calling on their firsthand insight and expertise to shape policies, strategies and programming.
“Learning from longstanding traditional/indigenous knowledge, we can develop successful mitigating strategies and resilience-building measures for the collective pathway forward.”
He notes that the Atlas supports the view that, by investing in resilience and the innovation that accompanies it, “we can unlock new opportunities and drive change around the world. Not only is it an effective and economically efficient way to allocate resources, it is also a critical lever to set in motion more positive ripple effects across communities and sectors worldwide.”
According to Bernard Magenhann, Acting Director General of the European Commission, Joint Research Centre, the world needs unprecedented cooperation among countries, economic sectors, and populations to improve drought resilience and, more generally, water resilience.
“The World Drought Atlas is unequivocal in conveying this message and seeks to raise awareness at all levels. It shows that sustainable solutions do exist if we boost actions now and if we step up cooperation,” Magenhann said, adding
“A lot has been already done and much remains to be accomplished. The World Drought Atlas signals the scale of the challenge that lies ahead and helps map out the pathways for enhanced global cooperation required to meet this challenge together.”
The International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA) notes that the Atlas brings to the fore the systemic and interconnected nature of drought and how its impacts expand across international supply chains, displacement pathways and energy grids.
“Droughts are risks, but they needn’t be disasters,” the organization says, “we see the Atlas as a powerful new resource to build political momentum for proactive drought risk management… We already have the knowledge and tools to build our resilience to harsher droughts. It is now our collective responsibility, and in our best interest, to take action for a drought-resilient future.”
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ATLAS
Impacts of human-made droughts
The World Drought Atlas explains how worsening drought risks are linked to human activities and delves into the impacts of drought in five key areas—water supply, agriculture, hydropower, inland navigation, and ecosystems.
In water supply, the Atlas discusses the implications of drought for public water supply, highlighting how the impacts vary depending on the supply system. It shows how drought can negatively impact not only the quantity of available water but also the quality. These impacts are discussed in the context of sanitation, hygiene and public health. It further addresses how political and economic drivers can mitigate or exacerbate impacts on populations and communities. The gendered effects of drought and water supply are highlighted, as well as water justice. Finally, it discusses the particular risks of urban areas facing water shortages.
The Atlas looks at inland navigation, from both a global trade and local socio-economic perspective. For large waterways, the impact of drought is discussed in terms of shipping with implications on global supply chains and, by extension, the global economy. Smaller waterways are also discussed given their importance for local communities, especially in roadless areas where people rely heavily on this natural infrastructure for transportation, trade, and access to education, food, and medicine.
The Atlas gives an overview of current global dependence on hydropower and the impact of specific past droughts. Vulnerabilities, risks, and impacts are discussed from both an environmental and economic standpoint. It also addresses the impacts of compound events such as heatwaves or floods.
On the nature front, the Atlas notes that while droughts pose a threat to ecosystems, greater biodiversity can mitigate drought impacts, meaning that promoting biodiversity is important to build drought resilience and vice versa.
The food-land-water nexus is another major focus of the Atlas, since agriculture accounts for around 70% of freshwater use globally, and is also seriously impacted by drought.
The publication explores how the agricultural products that reach our plates through global supply chains can worsen the effects of droughts and create water-stress in the countries where they are produced through virtual water transfers. Small-scale farmers and marginalized groups are particularly vulnerable due to disparities in water access and resources needed to build resilience to drought.
The Atlas also shows how drought risks are interconnected and why their effects span across sectors. Countries reliant on hydropower for electricity, for instance, may face power outages during droughts. If this happens during a heatwave, it can result in hospitalizations and deaths as people cannot use fans or air conditioning to cool their homes.
Lessons from recent droughts
The Atlas features 21 case studies from around the world, underscoring that no country—whatever its size, GDP, or latitude—is immune to drought and all can better prepare for it.
For example, the publication highlights impacts and lessons learned from recent droughts on the Great Plains of the US, in the city of Barcelona in Spain, and in the Yangtze River basin in China and explores drought impacts across the Central American Dry Corridor, the Indian subcontinent, and the Horn of Africa. Other case studies highlight the particular needs, resources, and perspectives of Indigenous communities when it comes to preparing for drought.
Droughts have increased by 29% since the year 2000 due to climate change and the unsustainable management of land and water resources. The UN considers human-made drought an emergency on a planetary scale, but notes that drought risks can be tackled with the right actions, policies and investments.
How to build drought resilience
The Atlas describes concrete measures and pathways to manage, reduce, and adapt to systemic drought risks; underscores the co-benefits of these actions for different sectors; and showcases best practices from different regions.
The measures highlighted in the Atlas fall into three categories: governance (e.g. early warning systems, microinsurance for smallholder farmers, pricing schemes for water usage); land-use management (e.g. land restoration and agroforestry); and the management of water supply and use (e.g. wastewater reuse, managed groundwater recharge and conservation.)