As global temperatures increase a new Report calls for better management of the risk of severe droughts

As climate change brings increasing global temperatures and disrupts rainfall patterns, a new report published by JRC, calls for better coordination to manage the risk of severe droughts.

The report highlights the deep and widespread impacts of droughts, beyond the already high direct costs. Costs stemming from indirect impacts on societies and economies, and on the environment including on ecosystems, biodiversity, soils and wetlands, are often not included in reported loss estimates.

Drought disproportionally affects the poor and vulnerable, and the wide-ranging and cascading impacts can pose a systemic risk to entire societies, especially in the context of compound events such as heatwaves and forest fires. To tackle these challenges, the report calls for better and more systematically recorded data on drought consequences, as well as analysis of the factors driving vulnerabilities to drought.

The report also emphasises that while drought poses a significant threat to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, this threat can be reduced by applying prospective, proactive and innovative approaches to drought risk management. Recent JRC research shows that, in the absence of action to limit and adapt to climate change, the direct economic impact of droughts on Europe could reach over €65 billion a year by 2100.