AlertNet<\/a> (London)<\/p>\nLaurie Goering<\/p>\n
1 December 2011<\/p>\n
Durban \u2014 Drought costs the world an average of $42 billion in economic losses a year, and creates wide-ranging economic pressures. For instance, a bad dry spell in the United States, a grain-exporting country, can drive up prices and lead to hunger in other nations that must import their grain, U.S. drought experts say.<\/p>\n
“Drought can have a tremendous ripple effect in a global economy,” notes Michael Brewer, a drought monitoring expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).<\/p>\n
But scientists and policy experts at the U.N. climate talks in Durban say they are coming up with innovative ways to lessen the damage – from micro-insurance programmes for the world’s most vulnerable farmers and herders, to drought-resistant crops and international drought-tracking systems intended to lay the groundwork for an eventual global drought early-warning system.<\/p>\n
Drought is a growing problem in many parts of the world as climate change impacts strengthen, affecting livelihoods, food production, hydropower generation and the spread of diseases.<\/p>\n
Parts of East Africa – including hard-hit Somalia – have been experiencing their worst drought in 60 years, following two years of below-normal rainfall. China’s central Hubei province battled a severe drought this year, and the U.S. state of Texas suffered one of its worst droughts in modern history, receiving less rain than Timbuktu over an eight-month period, according to Mannava Sivakumar, director of climate prediction and adaptation for the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).<\/p>\n
BEST-PRACTICE COMPENDIUM<\/p>\n
Perhaps the best way of coping, Sivakumar says, is for countries to develop pro-active national drought policies, aimed at coordinating all the agencies that might deal with a drought and putting in place measures to prepare.<\/p>\n
To that end, he and colleagues are building a compendium of more than 70 best drought practices, addressing everything from insurance and water management to crop switches, effective drought monitoring and relief efforts.<\/p>\n
The aim is to allow countries to survey all the options, and pick and choose the measures they believe will work most effectively in their situation.<\/p>\n
“We don’t create one drought policy for government to use. We want a compendium of options to give governments the ability to choose what is right for their priorities,” he explains.<\/p>\n
So far, long-parched Australia is the only nation that has a national drought policy, he adds.<\/p>\n
Brewer of NOAA, meanwhile, is working towards building a global drought-monitoring web portal that will combine data from around the world to give a more accurate picture of drought.<\/p>\n
The project is based on a decade-old drought data-sharing effort among the United States, Mexico and Canada, which each month produces a “continental depiction of drought”, Brewer says.<\/p>\n
Getting comparable accurate data around the world and effectively combining it is a huge challenge, but the effort has widespread interest not only from meteorological organisations but also groups working on food, water and national security issues.<\/p>\n
The project is “a long way” from being able to produce a good drought forecast, he admits, but “is the first step toward a drought early-warning system”.<\/p>\n
Read more at AlertNet Climate<\/a>, the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s daily news website on the human impacts of climate change.<\/em><\/p>\nAllAfrica – All the Time<\/p>\n
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AlertNet (London) Laurie Goering 1 December 2011 Durban \u2014 Drought costs the world an average of $42 billion in economic losses a year, and creates wide-ranging economic pressures. For instance, a bad dry spell in the United States, a grain-exporting country, can drive up prices and lead to hunger in other nations that must import their grain, U.S. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n
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