Drought, Climate Variability and Crisis
Di saster risk management as a development strategy; the way forward for UNDP
UNDP, in particular through the Drylands Development Centre (DDC) and the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (BCPR), is working with other partners, like the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), in the crisis field to address the question of drought related vulnerability through policy reform. An example of such a collaboration is a project currently being developed by BCPR and DDC that examines how lessons learned in enhancing resilience to drought in the Horn of Africa, which is chronically drought affected, can be applied to the Southern African region, which has experienced severe droughts over the last decade. Conversely, much can be learned in the Horn from the experience gained in Southern Africa on the issue of HIV/AIDS. Together, these natural and human crises dramatically undermine food security for the individual and undermine the resilience of society as a whole in the face of future shocks.
UNDP experience with Enhan cing Resilience to Drought
The DDC has been working on drought-triggered crises with vulnerable populations for over three decades, particularly in Africa, accumulating much experience and insight into both root causes and workable approaches to vulnerability reduction. Starting at the household level, DDC (as UNSO) worked on a large number of field level projects over many years and has recognized that a more systematic approach is required to link environment, poverty, vulnerability, economic development and governance. BCPR has been engaging with drought for many years (as the Emergency Response Division) as a contributing factor to humanitarian crisis. BCPR has been instrumental within the UN system in helping operationalize the integration of activities which to date have been separated between 'relief' and 'development', a barrier increasingly being broken down by conceptualizing the task as addressing the risk of a hazard becoming a disaster.
Enhancing Resilience to Drought in Africa
The fiirst step in the creation of a DDC ER-D strategy for Africa was to commission sub-regional studies within the most drought affected continent, Africa, on the status of drought vulnerability, critical factors, drought related legislation/policies/ institutions, best practices and recommendations. Having assessed the capacity and opportunities for ER-D at the national and sub-regional levels, the next phase of the programme was to identify a limited number of countries, representing a range of the socio-economic and environmental conditions representative of 3 regions in Sub Saharan Africa, for national strategies of ER-D. Concretely, at the sub-regional level, a drought management strategy has been prepared for the SADC Council of Ministers of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
In parallel, an initiative has been developed with various partners covering eight African countries, Coping with Drought, which will link:
(a) local drought early warning knowledge and practices to 'scientific' early warning, as is practiced in the sub-regional drought monitoring centres;
(b) local level drought coping strategies to district, national and even sub-regional response strategies; and
(c) early warning at various scales to early response at various scales. A separate but related activity for the exchange of best practices in ED-R, including ways of linking early warning to response is the African Drought Risk Reduction Network. This initiative, in collaboration with ISDR, will benefit all participating countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Finally, the specific natural hazard of drought will be incorporated within broad disaster preparedness programmes in a number of African countries, a BCPR, DDC and ISDR collaboration. UNDP is playing a critical role in the ISDR task force and is coordinating the working group on Risk and Vulnerability Assessment and contributing to the UN Inter-Agency Ad Hoc Working Group on Drought.
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