ISSN 1831-9424 European Commission Joint Research Centre and United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, World Drought Atlas [A. Toreti, D. Tsegai, and L. Rossi Eds], Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2024, doi:10.2760/3842670, JRC 139691.
Driven by changes in climate, land and water use and management, human population and consumption patterns, droughts worldwide are increasing in frequency, intensity, spatial extent and duration. The last decade has seen extreme, persistent, and recurrent droughts affecting large regions of the world and their populations, economies, and ecosystems. Despite these impacts and the growing risk, droughts have not received commensurate attention with respect to other hazards that have direct and immediately visible impacts. Response and preparedness efforts have not been enough to address the increasing threat posed by drought.
Droughts directly impact up to 55 million people annually and are among the costliest and deadliest hazards globally. They impact critical systems including drinking water supply, agriculture, energy supply, trade and navigation, while also threatening ecosystem health and the services they provide. This Atlas aims at raising awareness of and bring attention to the diverse, multisectoral, and interconnected impacts and showcase solutions to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to drought.
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 1 in 4 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.
Driven by changes in climate, land and water use and management, human population and consumption patterns, droughts worldwide are increasing in frequency, intensity, spatial extent and duration. The last decade has seen extreme, persistent, and recurrent droughts affecting large regions of the world and their populations, economies, and ecosystems. Despite these impacts and the growing risk, droughts have not received commensurate attention with respect to other hazards that have direct and immediately visible impacts. Response and preparedness efforts have not been enough to address the increasing threat posed by drought.
Droughts directly impact up to 55 million people annually and are among the costliest and deadliest hazards globally. They impact critical systems including drinking water supply, agriculture, energy supply, trade and navigation, while also threatening ecosystem health and the services they provide. This Atlas aims at raising awareness of and bring attention to the diverse, multisectoral, and interconnected impacts and showcase solutions to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to drought.
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 1 in 4 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.
The nature of drought presents challenges for scientists, practitioners, policymakers, and communities. Drought is a systemic phenomenon that cuts across sectors and systems, creating compound and cascading impacts that are difficult to estimate and predict. Even what constitutes drought may vary from one region, biome, and society to the next, as the experience of a dry period as a drought depends on the adaptive capacity and resources of the local ecosystem and human communities. While a temporary water deficit is the basis of droughts, sector-specific drivers characterise the exposure and vulnerability of communities and systems.
From a spatial and temporal perspective, droughts are not clear-cut. The interconnected nature of ecosystems, transportation corridors, and the global economy means that drought impacts can propagate far beyond the region and the time period in which the hazard occurred. The onset of droughts varies greatly, with some events resulting from slow and continuous accumulated deficits and others, especially flash droughts, emerging quickly and often unpredictably. Recovery is often much slower than the onset and can trigger long-term carry over and lag effects that are difficult to monitor and may not become clear for months or even years afterwards.
Increasing the complexity of drought and its impacts is the mitigation/amplification role of, e.g., regulatory policies and actions around land and water use and management, physical gray and green infrastructure. While this complexity increases the challenge for governments and communities, it also gives different entry points for action. Drought risk is a key factor of the water crisis which is intimately connected with the climate and biodiversity crises and which increases together with land degradation and aridification. Climate change is a major factor in the increasing frequency, duration, and intensity of droughts. It also increases the possibility of compound and concurrent hazards such as heatwaves, flash floods, and wildfires, themselves intensified by climate change. Meeting international climate mitigation goals is therefore critical to avoid worst-case scenarios.
Achieving drought resilience, including supporting governments in the development of drought risk management and adaptation plans, is central to international efforts. Drought resilience directly supports a number of Sustainable Development Goals, particularly those related to access to basic services and resources (e.g. no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, clean water and sanitation, and clean and affordable energy) and ecosystem health (e.g. climate action, life below water, and life on land). Indirectly, drought resilience also supports quality education, gender equality, decent work and economic growth, reduced inequality, sustainable cities and communities, peace, justice, and strong institutions.
Responding to the challenge of drought calls for a whole-of-society approach. This requires shifting from reactive crisis management to proactive, prospective and systemic risk management. On an international level, enhanced cooperation, knowledge-sharing, and resource mobilisation are critical to support governments in building resilience. To this end, the Integrated Drought Management Programme was established in 2013 and the International Drought Resilience Alliance was launched in 2022. Furthermore, in 2018, the UNCCD established the Drought Initiative, focused on preparedness systems, working at the regional level to reduce risk, and providing a toolbox to boost resilience. At the regional scale, e.g., the European Union recently established the Working Group on water scarcity and drought.
Building a whole-of-society approach implies collaborating both vertically across different levels of government and stakeholders and horizontally across sectors. Early warning systems and risk assessments under future climate conditions are key tools, but cannot fully account for all possible variables and will always be affected by intrinsic unknowns. As a result, policymakers should be familiar with best practices for decision-making under uncertainty. Pathways approaches can facilitate flexible and time sensitive implementation of risk management and adaptation measures, creating synergies between sectors and avoiding unintended negative consequence.
This Atlas is a visual resource aiming at conveying in an intuitive and direct way all dimensions of drought. It provides an overview of drought as a phenomenon, its impacts on critical systems, concrete case studies worldwide, and examples of risk management and adaptation. The Atlas is not intended to be all encompassing but to frame challenges and responses in such a way that policymakers feel equipped to take steps and actions towards drought resilience and to seek out further information where needed.
Driven by changes in climate, land and water use and management, human population and consumption patterns, droughts worldwide are increasing in frequency, intensity, spatial extent and duration. The last decade has seen extreme, persistent, and recurrent droughts affecting large regions of the world and their populations, economies, and ecosystems. Despite these impacts and the growing risk, droughts have not received commensurate attention with respect to other hazards that have direct and immediately visible impacts. Response and preparedness efforts have not been enough to address the increasing threat posed by drought.
Driven by changes in climate, land and water use and management, human population and consumption patterns, droughts worldwide are increasing in frequency, intensity, spatial extent and duration. The last decade has seen extreme, persistent, and recurrent droughts affecting large regions of the world and their populations, economies, and ecosystems. Despite these impacts and the growing risk, droughts have not received commensurate attention with respect to other hazards that have direct and immediately visible impacts. Response and preparedness efforts have not been enough to address the increasing threat posed by drought.
Droughts directly impact up to 55 million people annually and are among the costliest and deadliest hazards globally. They impact critical systems including drinking water supply, agriculture, energy supply, trade and navigation, while also threatening ecosystem health and the services they provide. This Atlas aims at raising awareness of and bring attention to the diverse, multisectoral, and interconnected impacts and showcase solutions to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to drought.
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 1 in 4 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.
The nature of drought presents challenges for scientists, practitioners, policymakers, and communities. Drought is a systemic phenomenon that cuts across sectors and systems, creating compound and cascading impacts that are difficult to estimate and predict. Even what constitutes drought may vary from one region, biome, and society to the next, as the experience of a dry period as a drought depends on the adaptive capacity and resources of the local ecosystem and human communities. While a temporary water deficit is the basis of droughts, sector-specific drivers characterise the exposure and vulnerability of communities and systems.
From a spatial and temporal perspective, droughts are not clear-cut. The interconnected nature of ecosystems, transportation corridors, and the global economy means that drought impacts can propagate far beyond the region and the time period in which the hazard occurred. The onset of droughts varies greatly, with some events resulting from slow and continuous accumulated deficits and others, especially flash droughts, emerging quickly and often unpredictably. Recovery is often much slower than the onset and can trigger long-term carry over and lag effects that are difficult to monitor and may not become clear for months or even years afterwards.
Increasing the complexity of drought and its impacts is the mitigation/amplification role of, e.g., regulatory policies and actions around land and water use and management, physical gray and green infrastructure. While this complexity increases the challenge for governments and communities, it also gives different entry points for action. Drought risk is a key factor of the water crisis which is intimately connected with the climate and biodiversity crises and which increases together with land degradation and aridification. Climate change is a major factor in the increasing frequency, duration, and intensity of droughts. It also increases the possibility of compound and concurrent hazards such as heatwaves, flash floods, and wildfires, themselves intensified by climate change. Meeting international climate mitigation goals is therefore critical to avoid worst-case scenarios.
Achieving drought resilience, including supporting governments in the development of drought risk management and adaptation plans, is central to international efforts. Drought resilience directly supports a number of Sustainable Development Goals, particularly those related to access to basic services and resources (e.g. no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well-being, clean water and sanitation, and clean and affordable energy) and ecosystem health (e.g. climate action, life below water, and life on land). Indirectly, drought resilience also supports quality education, gender equality, decent work and economic growth, reduced inequality, sustainable cities and communities, peace, justice, and strong institutions.
Responding to the challenge of drought calls for a whole-of-society approach. This requires shifting from reactive crisis management to proactive, prospective and systemic risk management. On an international level, enhanced cooperation, knowledge-sharing, and resource mobilisation are critical to support governments in building resilience. To this end, the Integrated Drought Management Programme was established in 2013 and the International Drought Resilience Alliance was launched in 2022. Furthermore, in 2018, the UNCCD established the Drought Initiative, focused on preparedness systems, working at the regional level to reduce risk, and providing a toolbox to boost resilience. At the regional scale, e.g., the European Union recently established the Working Group on water scarcity and drought.
Building a whole-of-society approach implies collaborating both vertically across different levels of government and stakeholders and horizontally across sectors. Early warning systems and risk assessments under future climate conditions are key tools, but cannot fully account for all possible variables and will always be affected by intrinsic unknowns. As a result, policymakers should be familiar with best practices for decision-making under uncertainty. Pathways approaches can facilitate flexible and time sensitive implementation of risk management and adaptation measures, creating synergies between sectors and avoiding unintended negative consequence.
This Atlas is a visual resource aiming at conveying in an intuitive and direct way all dimensions of drought. It provides an overview of drought as a phenomenon, its impacts on critical systems, concrete case studies worldwide, and examples of risk management and adaptation. The Atlas is not intended to be all encompassing but to frame challenges and responses in such a way that policymakers feel equipped to take steps and actions towards drought resilience and to seek out further information where needed.
The systemic nature of drought is highlighted in Chapter 1 using a conceptual framework that elucidates its elements, including interconnectedness across scales. The connection of drought to, e.g., water security, aridity, and desertification, as well as the importance of ongoing climate and social changes, is also discussed.
Chapter 2 presents drought impacts on different critical systems: water supply, agriculture, hydropower, inland navigation, and ecosystems. Each section is organised by themes that have global importance, and includes a discussion of relevant metrics. Each system is accompanied by an impact chain, a conceptual risk model that aims to visualise the most relevant drivers. The chapter closes with a discussion of cascading and cross-sectoral impacts, including food security, human mobility, conflict and cooperation, human health, and land degradation.
The systemic nature of drought is highlighted in Chapter 1 using a conceptual framework that elucidates its elements, including interconnectedness across scales. The connection of drought to, e.g., water security, aridity, and desertification, as well as the importance of ongoing climate and social changes, is also discussed.
Chapter 2 presents drought impacts on different critical systems: water supply, agriculture, hydropower, inland navigation, and ecosystems. Each section is organised by themes that have global importance, and includes a discussion of relevant metrics. Each system is accompanied by an impact chain, a conceptual risk model that aims to visualise the most relevant drivers. The chapter closes with a discussion of cascading and cross-sectoral impacts, including food security, human mobility, conflict and cooperation, human health, and land degradation.
Section 2.1 discusses the implications of drought for public water supply, highlighting how the impacts vary depending on the supply system and discusses 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. The section 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 is water justice. Finally, it discusses the particular risks of urban areas facing water shortages.
Section 2.2 addresses drought implications for agriculture, specifically irrigated and rainfed crops as well as livestock. The section draws a connection between food systems and their water footprint, including a discussion of virtual water transfers and the irrigation efficiency paradox. Particular attention is paid to the growing phenomenon of flash droughts, which can cause unexpected crop yield losses and failures. Socio-economic factors, in particular for smallholders, are discussed together with future risks.
Section 2.3 addresses potential drought impacts on hydropower, an energy source that is at once vulnerable to droughts and critical for meeting carbon reduction goals. It includes 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. Finally, the section addresses the impacts of compound events such as heatwaves or floods.
Inland navigation is discussed in Section 2.4 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.
Section 2.5 deals with ecosystems through the lens of some of the critical pillars that measure ecosystem health and the benefits they provide to human society. These include biodiversity, carbon cycling, and vulnerability to tipping points. Emphasis is placed on the ways drought can negatively impact these aspects, but also on how supporting healthy ecosystem function can help achieve drought resilience. Particular attention is given to soil carbon and to the ways drought can interact with other natural hazards that threaten ecosystems.
Section 2.6 showcases cross-sectoral and cascading effects to better understand and assess systemic drought risk. It explores the shared drivers of risk in relation to land conditions, behavior and demand, socio-political context, infrastructure interventions, and water resource management. This section also draws attention to cascading effects that may not be the direct result of drought but which, when combined with other natural or social stressors, can create widespread impacts.
Chapter 3 focuses on regional case studies and describes how drought can manifest in different parts of the world depending on climate, ecosystems, governance, and economic and social resources. These case studies were primarily written by researchers local to or based in those regions, who offered their perspectives on recent and relevant events, their impacts, and lessons learned from preparedness and response actions. This chapter complements the perspective offered in Chapter 2 by offering examples that are geographically specific but multisectoral and comprehensive. Chapter 3 facilitates knowledge sharing across different areas that face similar challenges. The chapter aims for global, though not exhaustive, coverage and includes the special cases of Small Island Developing States and urban areas.
Chapter 4 introduces important concepts and frameworks to understand comprehensive drought risk management and explore different options using a pathways approach. It is based on examples and best practices highlighting new ways of conceptualising drought management, rather than attempting to cover all possible actions and policies. The chapter discusses frameworks to move away from reactive management towards forward-looking proactive and prospective approaches.
Droughts, their risks and impacts are not stationary but evolve. Although the information provided here captures the current global state of drought, the overall findings and the recommendations have general validity. The Atlas represents a resource to raise awareness, enhance cooperation and increase action towards drought resilience. It is a tool to promote the continuous policy development in dialogue with scientific innovation, and local and traditional knowledge. Drought as a hazard will be a perpetual reality across the globe; drought as risk need not be.
Executive Secretary of UNCCD and Under-Secretary-General of the UN
Drought has challenged and afflicted communities throughout history. Albeit not a new phenomenon, drought is also not going away. Instead, when we observe the droughts that have affected communities in recent years, we cannot deny their striking frequency, duration, or intensity, nor their prevalence – affecting every continent on the globe. Exacerbated by climate change, mismanagement of vital resources - such as land and water- and negligently planned development, the future looks challenging. Estimates suggest that, by 2050, three of every four of us worldwide may be impacted by droughts.
Growing up in the Trarza region of southern Mauritania, I experienced drought and its debilitating impacts on families, communities and national development firsthand. I vividly recall the devastation caused by a drought in my birthplace in the 1970s. First, our water supply dried up. Then our crops failed. And then, our livestock perished. For months, famine loomed over our village. Instead of subsiding, drought has regularly returned to my community since then, causing displacement, disruption and sometimes, death.
By experience, the impacts of drought are not limited to land. Drought has a rippling effect: devastating crops and the water supply; every dry spell leaves families ever-more vulnerable to the next episode of drought. And, with each drought, dreams and lives of millions are shattered, leaving behind vulnerable people in search for a better future.
Drought has challenged and afflicted communities throughout history. Albeit not a new phenomenon, drought is also not going away. Instead, when we observe the droughts that have affected communities in recent years, we cannot deny their striking frequency, duration, or intensity, nor their prevalence – affecting every continent on the globe. Exacerbated by climate change, mismanagement of vital resources - such as land and water- and negligently planned development, the future looks challenging. Estimates suggest that, by 2050, three of every four of us worldwide may be impacted by droughts.
Growing up in the Trarza region of southern Mauritania, I experienced drought and its debilitating impacts on families, communities and national development firsthand. I vividly recall the devastation caused by a drought in my birthplace in the 1970s. First, our water supply dried up. Then our crops failed. And then, our livestock perished. For months, famine loomed over our village. Instead of subsiding, drought has regularly returned to my community since then, causing displacement, disruption and sometimes, death.
By experience, the impacts of drought are not limited to land. Drought has a rippling effect: devastating crops and the water supply; every dry spell leaves families ever-more vulnerable to the next episode of drought. And, with each drought, dreams and lives of millions are shattered, leaving behind vulnerable people in search for a better future.
While droughts appear to be local phenomena, their consequences can have global repercussions, amplifying forced migrations and conflicts over access to increasingly scarce resources.
And yet, glimmers of hope remain. While society remembers disasters as tragic, the communities experiencing them firsthand not only remember them too well, but they also learn from them and build their resilience.
We must stop believing that this only happens to others. We must stop being only reactive to drought; instead, we should proactively put in place measures to mitigate its consequences and reduce its devastating impacts – in society, nature and economy– which, together, stifle development and curtail advances made towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
This World Drought Atlas serves as a wake-up call, offering insight into the stark realities of drought and calling for urgency in our response. It reminds us that drought lacks regard for borders, leaving no region or country, regardless of their level of development, immune to its impacts. It reminds us that our actions similarly have far-reaching consequences – for all of us. As the world becomes more interconnected, so do the risks we share. To manage these risks, it is critical to understand how our individual and collective decisions and actions, as well as our inaction, influence the risks we face.
This publication comes at a crucial time. At the sixteenth Conferences of the Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from 2 – 13 December 2024 leaders from around the world have the unique opportunity to change the course of history towards drought resilience.
By challenging governments, business leaders and decision makers at all levels to radically rethink decision-making processes, and set in motion more effective, whole-of-society strategies to manage and mitigate drought risk, 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, democratising water governance and forging partnership with the stewards and caretakers of the world’s vast land and rich biodiversity. 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.
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.
Experiencing drought firsthand shaped my life, motivating me to commit to improving policy and practice, to help communities around the world better prepare for, and respond to, drought. Firsthand experience tends to have that effect on people – teaching us, through hardship, what not to do again. As the Executive Secretary of the UNCCD, I hope that you may learn from my experience and that of my home community, taking concrete action and putting in place mitigating measures so that drought may not befall you and your community tomorrow or anytime in the future.
There is no time to lose. I call on all nations, and in particular the Parties to the UNCCD, to carefully review the findings of this Atlas and take action to help shape a more resilient, more secure and more sustainable future that prioritises the needs of people, society, and the planet.
Drought has challenged and afflicted communities throughout history. Albeit not a new phenomenon, drought is also not going away. Instead, when we observe the droughts that have affected communities in recent years, we cannot deny their striking frequency, duration, or intensity, nor their prevalence – affecting every continent on the globe. Exacerbated by climate change, mismanagement of vital resources - such as land and water- and negligently planned development, the future looks challenging. Estimates suggest that, by 2050, three of every four of us worldwide may be impacted by droughts.
Drought has challenged and afflicted communities throughout history. Albeit not a new phenomenon, drought is also not going away. Instead, when we observe the droughts that have affected communities in recent years, we cannot deny their striking frequency, duration, or intensity, nor their prevalence – affecting every continent on the globe. Exacerbated by climate change, mismanagement of vital resources - such as land and water- and negligently planned development, the future looks challenging. Estimates suggest that, by 2050, three of every four of us worldwide may be impacted by droughts.
Growing up in the Trarza region of southern Mauritania, I experienced drought and its debilitating impacts on families, communities and national development firsthand. I vividly recall the devastation caused by a drought in my birthplace in the 1970s. First, our water supply dried up. Then our crops failed. And then, our livestock perished. For months, famine loomed over our village. Instead of subsiding, drought has regularly returned to my community since then, causing displacement, disruption and sometimes, death.
By experience, the impacts of drought are not limited to land. Drought has a rippling effect: devastating crops and the water supply; every dry spell leaves families ever-more vulnerable to the next episode of drought. And, with each drought, dreams and lives of millions are shattered, leaving behind vulnerable people in search for a better future.
While droughts appear to be local phenomena, their consequences can have global repercussions, amplifying forced migrations and conflicts over access to increasingly scarce resources.
And yet, glimmers of hope remain. While society remembers disasters as tragic, the communities experiencing them firsthand not only remember them too well, but they also learn from them and build their resilience.
We must stop believing that this only happens to others. We must stop being only reactive to drought; instead, we should proactively put in place measures to mitigate its consequences and reduce its devastating impacts – in society, nature and economy– which, together, stifle development and curtail advances made towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
This World Drought Atlas serves as a wake-up call, offering insight into the stark realities of drought and calling for urgency in our response. It reminds us that drought lacks regard for borders, leaving no region or country, regardless of their level of development, immune to its impacts. It reminds us that our actions similarly have far-reaching consequences – for all of us. As the world becomes more interconnected, so do the risks we share. To manage these risks, it is critical to understand how our individual and collective decisions and actions, as well as our inaction, influence the risks we face.
This publication comes at a crucial time. At the sixteenth Conferences of the Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from 2 – 13 December 2024 leaders from around the world have the unique opportunity to change the course of history towards drought resilience.
By challenging governments, business leaders and decision makers at all levels to radically rethink decision-making processes, and set in motion more effective, whole-of-society strategies to manage and mitigate drought risk, 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, democratising water governance and forging partnership with the stewards and caretakers of the world’s vast land and rich biodiversity. 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.
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.
Experiencing drought firsthand shaped my life, motivating me to commit to improving policy and practice, to help communities around the world better prepare for, and respond to, drought. Firsthand experience tends to have that effect on people – teaching us, through hardship, what not to do again. As the Executive Secretary of the UNCCD, I hope that you may learn from my experience and that of my home community, taking concrete action and putting in place mitigating measures so that drought may not befall you and your community tomorrow or anytime in the future.
There is no time to lose. I call on all nations, and in particular the Parties to the UNCCD, to carefully review the findings of this Atlas and take action to help shape a more resilient, more secure and more sustainable future that prioritises the needs of people, society, and the planet.
Acting Director General of the European Commission, Joint Research Centre
Drought is a global threat and a global challenge.
Almost all regions of the world are at risk of drought. The impact of droughts can be long term. They have both direct and indirect impacts, with cascading effects and shocks, that we still do not completely understand and cannot easily assess. Droughts evolve on several different spatial and temporal scales, lasting weeks (in the case of flash droughts) to months and even years. Their effects are not always immediately visible and this makes economic and financial assessment very complex.
The severity of threat is nonetheless clear. In recent years, extreme droughts have clearly highlighted the threat these hazards pose to population, economies and ecosystems. They have served as a wake-up call, revealing the limited effectiveness of the actions taken until now. The 2018 and 2022 droughts severely affected European agriculture, the energy sector, river transport as well as key natural systems providing essential services we rely on. We witnessed unprecedented combinations of warm temperature anomalies and persistent lack of precipitation, especially in spring and summer. In 2022, a humanitarian crisis was also triggered by persistent multi-annual drought in East Africa.
Again this year, in 2024, we are shocked by the vast extent of the drought affecting South America and the Amazon, a vital region of our planet that is essential for our climate change mitigation ambition.
Growing up in the Trarza region of southern Mauritania, I experienced drought and its debilitating impacts on families, communities and national development firsthand. I vividly recall the devastation caused by a drought in my birthplace in the 1970s. First, our water supply dried up. Then our crops failed. And then, our livestock perished. For months, famine loomed over our village. Instead of subsiding, drought has regularly returned to my community since then, causing displacement, disruption and sometimes, death.
By experience, the impacts of drought are not limited to land. Drought has a rippling effect: devastating crops and the water supply; every dry spell leaves families ever-more vulnerable to the next episode of drought. And, with each drought, dreams and lives of millions are shattered, leaving behind vulnerable people in search for a better future.
Drought is a global threat and a global challenge.
Almost all regions of the world are at risk of drought. The impact of droughts can be long term. They have both direct and indirect impacts, with cascading effects and shocks, that we still do not completely understand and cannot easily assess. Droughts evolve on several different spatial and temporal scales, lasting weeks (in the case of flash droughts) to months and even years. Their effects are not always immediately visible and this makes economic and financial assessment very complex.
The severity of threat is nonetheless clear. In recent years, extreme droughts have clearly highlighted the threat these hazards pose to population, economies and ecosystems. They have served as a wake-up call, revealing the limited effectiveness of the actions taken until now. The 2018 and 2022 droughts severely affected European agriculture, the energy sector, river transport as well as key natural systems providing essential services we rely on. We witnessed unprecedented combinations of warm temperature anomalies and persistent lack of precipitation, especially in spring and summer. In 2022, a humanitarian crisis was also triggered by persistent multi-annual drought in East Africa.
Again this year, in 2024, we are shocked by the vast extent of the drought affecting South America and the Amazon, a vital region of our planet that is essential for our climate change mitigation ambition.
Drought is not just a climate extreme. Human factors associated with the use and management of land and water can exacerbate and amplify droughts and their impacts. Unsustainable water use, water competition among different sectors, poor land management and not properly accounting for water resources are some examples of these human factors.
It must be clear to us all that the water crisis is linked to the climate and the biodiversity crises. Yet, much is still in our hands. We need to plan water resources adequately and avoid concurrent peaks in water demand. We need to implement sustainable land use and management practices and promote cooperation among the different sources of competition for land and water resources.
We need unprecedented levels of 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.
In my role at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, I see every day how research and innovation can facilitate solutions to pressing challenges. These efforts must also go together with harmonised policy actions and initiatives. In this context, I am glad to see the recent establishment of the working group on water scarcity and drought of the European Union as an open and inclusive space to share knowledge, best practices and cooperate. We can also look forward to the water resilience strategy of the European Union that will be developed and launched in the coming months.
Cooperation and actions extend well beyond the European Union. Let me highlight the International Drought Resilience Alliance and the Integrated Drought Management Programme, as well as the commitments taken during the last UN Water conference.
Data are essential in building knowledge and the management of risks replies upon monitoring and forecasting systems. Let me therefore highlight the importance of the Copernicus Programme and the role of services such as the Emergency Management service. These provide homogeneous, free data and information every day and for every region of the world.
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.
Growing up in the Trarza region of southern Mauritania, I experienced drought and its debilitating impacts on families, communities and national development firsthand. I vividly recall the devastation caused by a drought in my birthplace in the 1970s. First, our water supply dried up. Then our crops failed. And then, our livestock perished. For months, famine loomed over our village. Instead of subsiding, drought has regularly returned to my community since then, causing displacement, disruption and sometimes, death.
By experience, the impacts of drought are not limited to land. Drought has a rippling effect: devastating crops and the water supply; every dry spell leaves families ever-more vulnerable to the next episode of drought. And, with each drought, dreams and lives of millions are shattered, leaving behind vulnerable people in search for a better future.
While droughts appear to be local phenomena, their consequences can have global repercussions, amplifying forced migrations and conflicts over access to increasingly scarce resources.
And yet, glimmers of hope remain. While society remembers disasters as tragic, the communities experiencing them firsthand not only remember them too well, but they also learn from them and build their resilience.
We must stop believing that this only happens to others. We must stop being only reactive to drought; instead, we should proactively put in place measures to mitigate its consequences and reduce its devastating impacts – in society, nature and economy– which, together, stifle development and curtail advances made towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
This World Drought Atlas serves as a wake-up call, offering insight into the stark realities of drought and calling for urgency in our response. It reminds us that drought lacks regard for borders, leaving no region or country, regardless of their level of development, immune to its impacts. It reminds us that our actions similarly have far-reaching consequences – for all of us. As the world becomes more interconnected, so do the risks we share. To manage these risks, it is critical to understand how our individual and collective decisions and actions, as well as our inaction, influence the risks we face.
This publication comes at a crucial time. At the sixteenth Conferences of the Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from 2 – 13 December 2024 leaders from around the world have the unique opportunity to change the course of history towards drought resilience.
By challenging governments, business leaders and decision makers at all levels to radically rethink decision-making processes, and set in motion more effective, whole-of-society strategies to manage and mitigate drought risk, 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, democratising water governance and forging partnership with the stewards and caretakers of the world’s vast land and rich biodiversity. 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.
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.
Experiencing drought firsthand shaped my life, motivating me to commit to improving policy and practice, to help communities around the world better prepare for, and respond to, drought. Firsthand experience tends to have that effect on people – teaching us, through hardship, what not to do again. As the Executive Secretary of the UNCCD, I hope that you may learn from my experience and that of my home community, taking concrete action and putting in place mitigating measures so that drought may not befall you and your community tomorrow or anytime in the future.
There is no time to lose. I call on all nations, and in particular the Parties to the UNCCD, to carefully review the findings of this Atlas and take action to help shape a more resilient, more secure and more sustainable future that prioritises the needs of people, society, and the planet.
Drought is a global threat and a global challenge.
Almost all regions of the world are at risk of drought. The impact of droughts can be long term. They have both direct and indirect impacts, with cascading effects and shocks, that we still do not completely understand and cannot easily assess. Droughts evolve on several different spatial and temporal scales, lasting weeks (in the case of flash droughts) to months and even years. Their effects are not always immediately visible and this makes economic and financial assessment very complex.
Drought is a global threat and a global challenge.
Almost all regions of the world are at risk of drought. The impact of droughts can be long term. They have both direct and indirect impacts, with cascading effects and shocks, that we still do not completely understand and cannot easily assess. Droughts evolve on several different spatial and temporal scales, lasting weeks (in the case of flash droughts) to months and even years. Their effects are not always immediately visible and this makes economic and financial assessment very complex.
The severity of threat is nonetheless clear. In recent years, extreme droughts have clearly highlighted the threat these hazards pose to population, economies and ecosystems. They have served as a wake-up call, revealing the limited effectiveness of the actions taken until now. The 2018 and 2022 droughts severely affected European agriculture, the energy sector, river transport as well as key natural systems providing essential services we rely on. We witnessed unprecedented combinations of warm temperature anomalies and persistent lack of precipitation, especially in spring and summer. In 2022, a humanitarian crisis was also triggered by persistent multi-annual drought in East Africa.
Again this year, in 2024, we are shocked by the vast extent of the drought affecting South America and the Amazon, a vital region of our planet that is essential for our climate change mitigation ambition.
Drought is not just a climate extreme. Human factors associated with the use and management of land and water can exacerbate and amplify droughts and their impacts. Unsustainable water use, water competition among different sectors, poor land management and not properly accounting for water resources are some examples of these human factors.
It must be clear to us all that the water crisis is linked to the climate and the biodiversity crises. Yet, much is still in our hands. We need to plan water resources adequately and avoid concurrent peaks in water demand. We need to implement sustainable land use and management practices and promote cooperation among the different sources of competition for land and water resources.
We need unprecedented levels of 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.
In my role at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, I see every day how research and innovation can facilitate solutions to pressing challenges. These efforts must also go together with harmonised policy actions and initiatives. In this context, I am glad to see the recent establishment of the working group on water scarcity and drought of the European Union as an open and inclusive space to share knowledge, best practices and cooperate. We can also look forward to the water resilience strategy of the European Union that will be developed and launched in the coming months.
Cooperation and actions extend well beyond the European Union. Let me highlight the International Drought Resilience Alliance and the Integrated Drought Management Programme, as well as the commitments taken during the last UN Water conference.
Data are essential in building knowledge and the management of risks replies upon monitoring and forecasting systems. Let me therefore highlight the importance of the Copernicus Programme and the role of services such as the Emergency Management service. These provide homogeneous, free data and information every day and for every region of the world.
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.
Growing up in the Trarza region of southern Mauritania, I experienced drought and its debilitating impacts on families, communities and national development firsthand. I vividly recall the devastation caused by a drought in my birthplace in the 1970s. First, our water supply dried up. Then our crops failed. And then, our livestock perished. For months, famine loomed over our village. Instead of subsiding, drought has regularly returned to my community since then, causing displacement, disruption and sometimes, death.
By experience, the impacts of drought are not limited to land. Drought has a rippling effect: devastating crops and the water supply; every dry spell leaves families ever-more vulnerable to the next episode of drought. And, with each drought, dreams and lives of millions are shattered, leaving behind vulnerable people in search for a better future.
While droughts appear to be local phenomena, their consequences can have global repercussions, amplifying forced migrations and conflicts over access to increasingly scarce resources.
And yet, glimmers of hope remain. While society remembers disasters as tragic, the communities experiencing them firsthand not only remember them too well, but they also learn from them and build their resilience.
We must stop believing that this only happens to others. We must stop being only reactive to drought; instead, we should proactively put in place measures to mitigate its consequences and reduce its devastating impacts – in society, nature and economy– which, together, stifle development and curtail advances made towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
This World Drought Atlas serves as a wake-up call, offering insight into the stark realities of drought and calling for urgency in our response. It reminds us that drought lacks regard for borders, leaving no region or country, regardless of their level of development, immune to its impacts. It reminds us that our actions similarly have far-reaching consequences – for all of us. As the world becomes more interconnected, so do the risks we share. To manage these risks, it is critical to understand how our individual and collective decisions and actions, as well as our inaction, influence the risks we face.
This publication comes at a crucial time. At the sixteenth Conferences of the Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia from 2 – 13 December 2024 leaders from around the world have the unique opportunity to change the course of history towards drought resilience.
By challenging governments, business leaders and decision makers at all levels to radically rethink decision-making processes, and set in motion more effective, whole-of-society strategies to manage and mitigate drought risk, 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, democratising water governance and forging partnership with the stewards and caretakers of the world’s vast land and rich biodiversity. 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.
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.
Experiencing drought firsthand shaped my life, motivating me to commit to improving policy and practice, to help communities around the world better prepare for, and respond to, drought. Firsthand experience tends to have that effect on people – teaching us, through hardship, what not to do again. As the Executive Secretary of the UNCCD, I hope that you may learn from my experience and that of my home community, taking concrete action and putting in place mitigating measures so that drought may not befall you and your community tomorrow or anytime in the future.
There is no time to lose. I call on all nations, and in particular the Parties to the UNCCD, to carefully review the findings of this Atlas and take action to help shape a more resilient, more secure and more sustainable future that prioritises the needs of people, society, and the planet.
State Secretary of Environment of Spain, on behalf of the [co-chairs of the] International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA)
Full Professor of Ecology, Minister for the Environment and Ecological Transition, Senegal
Quality information and data are at the basis of good governance. However, humanity’s knowledge on how drought risks are changing in a warming planet —and what that means for our communities, economies and ecosystems— is often fragmented and abstract.
We, on behalf of the International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA) and its more than 70 member countries and organisations, are proud to support the publication you have in your hands: the most complete global knowledge product on drought to date, created to support decision-makers in understanding what a new era of droughts means for social prosperity, economic dynamism and political stability in a globalised world.
Through telling data, illuminating visuals and curated case studies, the Global Drought Atlas shows the extent to which drought risks are globally networked through issues like trade and forced migration; highlights the impacts of drought on crucial economic sectors; and explains what we know works to build resilience to future droughts.
One after the other, the dozens of maps in the Atlas show that no country is immune to drought and that all can attune their policies and investments to better prepare for it.
Around 85% of the people impacted by drought live in low- and middle-income countries and agriculture is often hardest hit. But time and again, 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. From IDRA, we see the Atlas as a powerful new resource to build political momentum for proactive drought risk management ahead of UNCCD COP16 in Riyadh. 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.
Quality information and data are at the basis of good governance. However, humanity’s knowledge on how drought risks are changing in a warming planet —and what that means for our communities, economies and ecosystems— is often fragmented and abstract.
We, on behalf of the International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA) and its more than 70 member countries and organisations, are proud to support the publication you have in your hands: the most complete global knowledge product on drought to date, created to support decision-makers in understanding what a new era of droughts means for social prosperity, economic dynamism and political stability in a globalised world.
Quality information and data are at the basis of good governance. However, humanity’s knowledge on how drought risks are changing in a warming planet —and what that means for our communities, economies and ecosystems— is often fragmented and abstract.
We, on behalf of the International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA) and its more than 70 member countries and organisations, are proud to support the publication you have in your hands: the most complete global knowledge product on drought to date, created to support decision-makers in understanding what a new era of droughts means for social prosperity, economic dynamism and political stability in a globalised world.
Through telling data, illuminating visuals and curated case studies, the Global Drought Atlas shows the extent to which drought risks are globally networked through issues like trade and forced migration; highlights the impacts of drought on crucial economic sectors; and explains what we know works to build resilience to future droughts.
One after the other, the dozens of maps in the Atlas show that no country is immune to drought and that all can attune their policies and investments to better prepare for it.
Around 85% of the people impacted by drought live in low- and middle-income countries and agriculture is often hardest hit. But time and again, 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. From IDRA, we see the Atlas as a powerful new resource to build political momentum for proactive drought risk management ahead of UNCCD COP16 in Riyadh. 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.
