Drought has a potential effect to cause other disasters. Some effects are summarized below:
====Poverty and food insecurity====
[[Image:india-poverty-drought.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Crops are ruined by floods or drought, causing poverty. Photo: [http://www.backpacking-tips-asia.com/india-poverty.html Backpacking Tips Asia.]]]
* Drought causes increased poverty and food insecurity. Where drought events often occur with such frequency that people have no time to recover before another drought hits, their usual coping strategies for normal cyclical drought become inadequate. This results in increasing poverty and chronic food insecurity.
* [http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CFYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fao.org%2Fcrisis%2F28402-0f9dad42f33c6ad6ebda108ddc1009adf.pdf&ei=tHvNT966FsWi2gWo-e2PAw&usg=AFQjCNGqdHl88ZLD4L_HKf5NDoI2mPJDhQ&sig2=PO8bza5-J_GBaTRxIANnTg Drought‐related food insecurity: A focus on the Horn of Africa.] FAO, 2011.
====Gender====
[[Image:women collecting water.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Woman collecting water. Photo: [http://www.wateraidamerica.org/ Water Aid] / Layton Thompson.]]
* Drought negatively impacts well-being of women and girls who will spend more time collecting firewood, collecting water from increasingly distant sources, attending to sick family members and cultivating land (most agricultural activities undertaken by women).
====Water wars and conflict====
[[Image:water wars.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Blue Gold: Water Wars, the movie. Image: [http://www.bluegold-worldwaterwars.com/ Bluegold-worldwaterwars.com.]]]
* Drought can increase conflict. Although complex to link as cause and effect, in some areas (e.g. Darfur) drought has resulted in differing interpretations of rights to access water and land among nomadic and sedentary groups, contributing to the escalation of ethnic tensions.
====Hydropower generation====
[[Image:hydropower africa.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Small hydropower operations are greatly affected by drought. Photo: ABD Finesse.]]
* Drought impacts power generation, industrial production and investment. In Kenya, 26% of all the economic losses during the 1998 – 2000 drought was due to reduction in hydropower generation, while 58% was due to reduction in industrial production, which was the largest sector affected.
