World Drought Atlas

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 lowand 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 wholeof- 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.