Drought Risk Management In South And South East Asia

The geo-climatic conditions of South and South-East Asian countries are diverse and vulnerable to multiple natural hazards such as drought. Drought evolves over months or even years, affects a large spatial extent and causes enormous damages. Drought Risk Management in South and South-East Asia is a comprehensive reference on overall perspectives and scenarios on drought risk mitigation and management, based on researches and case studies from South and South-East Asian countries. Drought management is a complex area of work that requires active and continuous participation of the national, provincial and local governments, multiple ministries, and divisions. This book demonstrates the best practices of socio-economic and technological interventions to enhance drought risk management, which will help to develop plans and policies, and their implementation to reduce the impact of droughts. It also offers views of field practitioners on impacts of the interventions practised at the national, sub-national and local levels.

This report is a component of the Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS)–-funded project “Impacts of Climate Extremes on Future Water and Food Security in South Asia and East Africa.” The goal of the project was to characterize extreme drought events, to improve on a methodology to assess the probability of these events in the future under climate change, to illustrate their impacts, and to provide suggestions on coping strategies. The present report sets the stage for the overall project by undertaking a review of the causes of vulnerability to drought in East Africa and the western Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) of South Asia, and discussing the options to increase resilience to drought in the agricultural sector. Agriculture is a high-risk endeavor in both regions, due to a combination of recurrent droughts—which may intensify due to climate change—poor soil fertility, and a host of constraints faced by farmers, especially low access to input and output markets. These factors, combined with farmers’ high aversion to risk, stifle investments in agriculture, resulting in continuous underachieving production, low income, and persisting poverty.

This book addresses an important topic of food security in South Asia with specific reference to climate change. Of the 1 billion food insecure people in the world, more than 30% are in South Asia. The problem of food insecurity may be exacerbated by the projected climate change especially because of the water scarcity caused by rapid melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas and increase in variability in monsoonal rains and frequency of extreme events. Furthermore, large populations of Bangladesh and other coastal regions may be displaced by sea level rise. Thus, this volume addresses recommended land use and soil/water/crop/vegetation management practices which would enable land managers to adapt to climate disruption by enhancing soil/ecosystem/social resilience. In addition to biophysical factors, this book also addresses the issues related to human dimensions including social, ethnical and political considerations.

South-East Asia is regularly hit by droughts. Though starting slowly, droughts can have devastating cumulative impacts - striking hardest at the poor and heightening inequality, as well as degrading land and increasing the prospects of violent conflict. There will be many more dry years ahead, and the area affected by drought is likely to shift and expand. Ready for the Dry Years offers a clear analysis of this subject, assessing prospects for the decades ahead and highlighting the principal risks. Building resilience will be fundamental for the continued development of ASEAN countries. issued jointly by the ESCAP and ASEAN secretariats, the Report identifies the priorities for increasing resilience to drought and helping countries adapt. The primary audience of this report are policymakers in South-East Asia who are responsible for disaster risk reduction and development issues.

The study examines the global pattern and impacts of droughts through mapping several drought-related characteristics - either at a country level or at regular grid scales. It appears that arid and semi-arid areas also tend to have a higher probability of drought occurrence. It is illustrated that the African continent is lagging behind the rest of the world on many indicators related to drought-preparedness and that agricultural economies, overall, are much more vulnerable to adverse societal impacts of meteorological droughts. The study also examines the ability of various countries to satisfy their water needs during droughts using storage-related indices.

This book is the first to present a regional analysis of climate change and human health, focusing on geographically and socio-economically distinct countries of South and Southeast Asia. It has a major focus on India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal and Taiwan. Climate change is a significant and emerging threat to human health. lt represents a range of environmental hazards and will affect populations in both the developed and developing countries. In particular, it affects the regions where the current burden of climate-sensitive diseases are high, which is the case in South and Southeast Asian countries.