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THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS ® Drought Preparedness:
A New Paradigm
“Droughts that afflict developed societies arise from a complex
interaction of natural physical phenomena and human behaviors and decisions.”
Drought is a slow-onset,
normal, recurring feature of climate. It results from a natural reduction in
the amount of precipitation lasting a season or more and occurs in virtually
all regions of the world. Drought results in serious economic, social, and
environmental impacts. It is the leading
hazard in economic losses each year in the United States.
The Risk of Drought
Is Increasing
The risk of drought is increasing worldwide. Increased
drought risk arises from increased likelihood of drought plus increased
vulnerability to drought.
The likelihood of drought has increased with climate change
and is evident in recent persistent or recurring severe droughts. Global
climate change directly and indirectly impacts the hydrologic cycle, reducing
water availability.
Vulnerability to drought is increasing in all parts of the
United States due to population growth and population shifts, especially in the
water-short western states and in the Southeast. Increased drought
vulnerability is due to a number of factors:
- Population
increase places more demand on finite water resources. Increased demand
comes from all sectors—agriculture, municipal uses, energy, ecosystem
habitat maintenance, and recreation
- Methods
of determining available water resources are poor, and in fast-growing
regions, we may have already outstripped our resources.
- Land use changes due to development and other
activities reduce water storage and degrade water quality.
- Government
policies, land-use decisions, and the “water culture” of a locale
may also increase vulnerability.
Crisis management of drought is ineffective.
Much of the United States is caught in the “hydro-illogical
cycle.” http://www.drought.unl.edu/plan/cycle.htm
This way of thinking about drought management is reactive–focused
on crisis management. It has proved ineffective because response is untimely,
poorly coordinated, and poorly targeted to drought stricken groups or areas.
Moreover, drought relief payments to farmers, communities and others tend
to reinforce the traditional resource management practices that have often
increased societal vulnerability to drought.
Drought preparedness is the new paradigm.
Many governments now understand
the fallacy of crisis management and are learning how to prepare for drought
using risk management techniques to reduce drought risk and the impacts of
future drought events.
Drought preparedness plans
commonly have three major components:
· Monitoring and early warning. The
overall goal of drought monitoring is to provide information that enables a reliable
assessment of water availability and persuades people and organizations to take
action to mitigate the effects of drought.
Various agencies of the federal government are providing increasingly
sophisticated drought monitoring tools.
· Risk and impact assessment. Risk-based
analyses are the best available approach for planning for, managing, and
mitigating drought. Risk-based analyses can consider a full range of potential
drought scenarios and their likelihood and can help identify those scenarios
that contribute the most to the risks. Risk-based approaches incorporate both
scientific knowledge and uncertainty, and can provide water managers with a
rigorous quantitative framework to evaluate costs and benefits of different
resource allocation and risk mitigation approaches.
· Mitigation and response. Mitigation is
defined as short- and long-term actions, programs, or policies implemented
during and in advance of drought that reduce the degree of risk to human life,
property, and productive capacity. In contrast to mitigation, response actions
are those taken once an area is experiencing severe drought and are intended to
address impacts and expedite recovery of the affected area. The goal is to
emphasize mitigation over emergency response actions because the latter does
little to reduce risk and may actually increase vulnerability to drought
through increased dependence on government or donor intervention. Mitigation
might include legislation and public policy measures, water supply
augmentation, public education programs, technical assistance, conservation,
emergency response, water use and conflict resolution.
How to plan for drought.
From a scientific perspective,
drought planning is most soundly implemented at the scale of watersheds and
hydrologic basins. Because watersheds and hydrologic basins often span multiple
geopolitical jurisdictions, drought planning can and should occur at local,
state, federal, and tribal levels. The National Drought Mitigation Center
advocates implementing measures to reduce vulnerability before drought occurs.
This is most likely to be effective when drought planning is incorporated into
other resource and hazard planning processes, into land- and water-use
planning, and into agricultural policy.
Public involvement in sustainability is key.
Perhaps the biggest challenge
facing policy-makers at all levels is balancing short-term revenue generation
with long-term sustainability of cities, land, and ecosystems, some of which
may be approaching their maximum carrying capacity.
Droughts that afflict developed
societies arise from a complex interaction of natural physical phenomena and
human behaviors and decisions. There are limits to what management and science
can achieve in the face of natural scarcity (drought) without the cooperation
of those affected by the management choices.
What is needed is a public that
is engaged through participatory and place- based community efforts and
informed through educational efforts. Public participation and partnership in
the management of scarce resources is the necessary mechanism for securing
societal permission to act. Sustainable choices are not possible without the
support of an aware public that understands both the choices and the
consequences of a failure to act. Public awareness that drought is natural and
normal can be achieved through collective understanding of the
interconnectedness of natural and human systems and through an appreciation
that, individually and collectively, members of the public have common needs
and shared responsibility for creating a habitable future—thus the need for
developing a “national water culture.”
This explanation of drought preparedness has been excerpted from
several documents:
DROUGHT
PREPAREDNESS AND DROUGHT MANAGEMENT
M.V.K. Sivakumar (World Meteorological
Organization, Geneva, Switzerland) and D.A. Wilhite (National Drought Mitigation
Center, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA )
http://www.wg-crop.icidonline.org/2doc.pdf
MANAGING
DROUGHT: A ROADMAP FOR CHANGE IN THE UNITED STATES. A Conference Report from the Geological Society of America.
http://www.geosociety.org/meetings/06drought/roadmap.pdf
DROUGHT
PREPAREDNESS PLANNING: BUILDING INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITY. Donald A. Whilhite,
Michael J. Hayes and Cody L. Knutson. National
Drought Mitigation Center, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
http://www.drought.unl.edu/plan/handbook/10step_rev.pdf
Other Relevant Links:
National Drought
Mitigation Center http://www.drought.unl.edu/
U.S. Drought
Monitor
http://www.drought.unl.edu/DM/monitor.html
National
Weather Service Climate Prediction Center
When It Rains,
It Pours: Global Warming and the Rising Frequency of
Extreme Precipitation
in the United States. Environment America.
Preparing for
Drought in the 21st Century.
Report of the National Drought Policy Commission.
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/drought/finalreport/accesstoreports.htm
The North
Carolina Atlas Revisited: Weather & Climate. Peter J. Robinson. UNC Chapel
Hill Department of Geography and Earth Sciences.
http://www.ncatlasrevisited.org/homefrm.html
Questions? Email LWVWake@bellsouth.net
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This site was last revised 3/19/2008.