Drought Management Norms: Is the Middle East and North Africa Region Managing Risks or Crises?

Abstract

The Middle East and North Africa region experiences severe socioeconomic and political impacts during droughts and faces increasing drought risk in future climate projections. The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction’s Sendai Framework and the International Drought Management Programme provide a global standard (a norm) to manage droughts through natural hazard risk reduction approaches. We use participatory engagement to evaluate whether norm diffusion has taken place in four countries. Data were collected in interviews, focus groups, workshops, and policy documents. Analysis reveals incomplete norm diffusion; stakeholders subscribe to relevant values, but national policies and implementation do not fully reflect the norm. Process tracing reveals that the availability of drought early warning data is a key barrier to risk reduction. Further more, a drought early warning system would not be feasible or sufficient unless paired with policy measures and financial mechanisms to reduce the political and economic costs of a drought declaration.

Drought-stricken U.S. states have more comprehensive water-related hazard planning

“…When a state experiences drought year after year, there seems to be a strong incentive to make planning a priority. This is consistent with other studies that nd droughts catalyze water policy reforms (Berbel and Esteben, 2019), that droughts change stakeholders' support for state-level water policy (Craig et al, 2019), that stakeholders in drought-stricken regions of the world recognize the urgent need for drought mitigation planning (Jedd et al, 2021), and that increased drought experience can result in higher levels of public attention (Smith et al, 2020). As an interviewee told us, recently all of its counties had been in initial or continuous drought that year, which they said led to an emergency drought declaration by the governor and a renewed emphasis on planning.…”

Towards Effective Drought Monitoring in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region: Implications from Assimilating Leaf Area Index and Soil Moisture into the Noah-MP Land Surface Model for Morocco

“…Recognizing the complexity in defining drought and the broad range of drought impacts, drought experts have favored using a Composite Drought Indicator (CDI) approach that combines indicators from different climate variables such as precipitation, soil moisture, vegetation and evapotranspiration (ET) into a single product through a "convergence of evidence" framework (Hayes et al, 2012). Such approaches have been applied to four MENA countries (i.e., Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon and Jordan) through a USAID-funded project in developing the MENA Regional Drought Management Systems (MENA RDMS; Jedd et al, 2020;Bijaber et al, 2018;Fragaszy et al, 2020). Accurate estimates of these constituent variables are therefore necessary for developing reliable drought assessments with CDI.…”

A Systems-Based Approach to Analyze Environmental Issues: Problem-Oriented Innovation System for Water Scarcity Problem in Iran

“…In other words, these challenges have resulted in crisis management rather than systems-based approach and innovative governance and management of water scarcity, while many nations have shifted from drought and water scarcity crisis management to more innovative approaches (Jedd et al, 2021). Therefore, at the first step, a comprehensive strategy regarding the water scarcity problem should be formulated, and the responsible institutional body for that should be created afterward (F1).…”