Difference between revisions of "Drought and links to other disasters"

Revision as of 04:01, 5 June 2012

Drought has a potential effect to cause other disasters. Some effects are summarized below:

Crops are ruined by floods or drought, causing poverty. Photo: India poverty.

• 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.

• Drought causes decreased agricultural productivity. Increased temperatures cause increased water demand for crops, which may be less available. Recent research into the effects of climate change indicates that even if basic adaptive measures are taken, global agricultural production will decline 3% by 2080 due to increased temperatures. In Kenya, the 1998 – 2000 droughts caused a 15% reduction in agricultural production (5% of which was livestock).

Woman collecting water. Addressing two critical MDGs together: gender in water, sanitation and hygiene initiatives. Photo: 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).

• 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.

• 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.