Current Approaches to Vulnerability and Impact Assessment

ABRAHAM E. M.

Geneva

Encuentro; High-level Meeting on National Drought Policy. Towards more drought resilient societies; 2013

Meteorological Organization, FAO & UNCCD

It is a known fact that desertification and land degradation exacerbate the impact of recurrent drought. This situation becomes critical in developing countries, where drought increases the vulnerability of local populations, living in scarce water conditions, poverty, and forgotten by decision makers. I will focus my comment on the conditions of developing countries in Latin America, especially along the arid diagonal of Argentina, the Monte Desert, which reflects the conditions of an extensive rain shadow desert at the foot of the Great Andes Mountains. The region is home to 30% of the country?s population, settled in a model of middle sized cities and irrigated croplands, ?oases?. This area develops thanks to Andean river regulation for irrigation. This model is threatened by scenarios of climate change, glacier retreat and change in the rainfall regime. The consequence is less and less assurance of the sufficient supply of snow for the yearly discharge that, regularly and year after year, provides the water needed for consumption and production. But even more threatened is the rest of the non-irrigated territory, populated by subsistence livestock producers. These are subjected to recurrent droughts that weaken their already precarious economy and livelihoods in totally desertified lands. The forecast of river runoff water in dry years is the only alert system provided by the Irrigation Department for the cultivated area in the central west of Argentina. This allows for preventive measures for rationalization of surface water. There is not, however, a system to warn about the effects of recurrent droughts whereby precipitations are even poorer (mean annual rainfall is 200 mm). Rainfall is the only source of water for the people in non irrigated areas which constitute the rest of the territory. Drought leaves these people in a situation that threatens their low production of small livestock and increasingly reduces their stocks, forcing them to resort to undesired practices such as overgrazing, abandonment and migration. This is worsened by the interaction, not yet known enough, with other systems for protection of crops in irrigated areas, such as the fight against hailstorms. By seeding hail clouds with nuclei, this system reduces the fall of hail in the protected area, but probably has undesired effects on precipitations in the surrounding areas. Local people say that, ever since this system was implemented, there has been less and less rain falling on their fields and ?the clouds dissolve? without discharging on the desert. Nothing is known about this yet. The only systems implemented as a policy for drought management are post-impact assistance measures. According to what has been stated here, these interventions are normally relief measures in the form of emergency assistance programs aimed at providing money or other specific types of assistance (e.g., livestock feed, water, food) to the victims of the drought. As has been explained here, this reactive approach is seriously flawed from the perspective of vulnerability reduction since the recipients of this assistance are not expected to change behaviors or resource management practices as a condition for the assistance. I fully agree with what is proposed as part of a National Drought Management Policy, namely to emphasize the development and implementation of pre-impact government programs and preparedness plans and policies directed towards reducing drought risk. Reactive assistance policies are a common indicator in most Latin American countries. This is only a symptom of a much larger problem: drylands, with all their potential and restrictions, are neither perceived nor taken into account by decision makers. Not only the government, but also most part of the society, fails to perceive that the territory of the majority of Latin American countries is composed of drylands at risk of desertification and drought. This brings as a consequence an inexistence of territory planning and management. These measures would not only protect the people against these risks but would basically put value on dryland resources, expressing the will to develop drylands, recovering their natural and social capital, many times lost from desertification. I think that there lies the most important message of this meeting, directed to decision makers and society at large, which is to implement a National State Policy able to develop drylands sustainably through a sufficiently robust technology package to prevent the adverse effects of drought and put value on dryland resources. Accomplishing this would certainly contribute to national development. Obviously, these systems should be based on knowledge and participation. There are research and development units such as IADIZA, in this case in Argentina, ISA in Brazil, CAZALAC in Chile, or CIZA in Peru, to mention only some in the Region, which would be in condition to cooperate with the process of knowledge construction. The Region also offers trained human resources and institutional capacity, very strong links with the people and local and provincial governments, all of which would contribute to giving these efforts solidness and permanence. I want to highlight, in the case of Argentina, the recently created National Observatory for Desertification Assessment and Monitoring, which is a tool with great potentials to develop this type of work. Why think of participatory systems? The people in drylands are used to manage the cycles of the restrictive nature with which they live, and where they choose to permanently live and produce. We hold the thesis that it is precisely these traditional lifestyles, accustomed to cope with short, mid and long-term cyclic variations, which have enhanced the processes of resilience of these dry ecosystems. To harness these advantages, given by centuries or millennia of adaptation, it is only necessary to mitigate the processes of inequality that these populations are used to endure: land tenure issues, total lack of access to surface and ground water, lack of investment in infrastructure and services, absence of policies to democratize health and education. Nowadays, those who want to access these services, which are basic in any democratic state, must desert the degraded non-irrigated drylands and swell the slums of misery around cities that offer them the illusion of improvement. Listening to them and placing value on their knowledge is essential not only to combat desertification and land degradation in these dry territories, but also because they are the ones who know best about uncertain scenarios of climate change that may begin to affect other territories. This wisdom, learned after centuries of coexistence with dryness and not fighting it, can be invaluable to the rest of the territories that only now are facing this scourge, for them to address key drought issues and concerns. At the same time, this knowledge is fundamental to the design and implementation of integrated and participatory systems to assess the vulnerability of dry ecosystems and the impact of drought. The development of NDMPs (National Drought Management Policies at Country Level), is absolutely necessary for countries like Argentina, and for the rest of Latin America, but it must be accompanied by a technology package that allows harnessing all options provided by dry ecosystems and their inhabitants. Only then will it be possible to effectively mitigate the impacts of drought and water shortage and achieve economic growth and human and environmental well-being. It is desirable that national policies should be sustained within the regional and global framework, with the support of international cooperation. Thus they will contribute to attain ?Greater collaboration to enhance the local/national/regional/global observation network and information delivery system, including cross‐border coordination, to improve public understanding of and preparedness for drought.?