In recent years, the need for a transition towards proactive drought management emerged as crucial. Adopting risk-based approaches requires a deeper understanding of impacts across sectors and a clearer analysis of the vulnerabilities of the ecosystems. This highlights the critical role of impact, risk, and vulnerability assessments as integral parts of national drought plans. They serve as a fundamental tool for preparing for drought events, devising strategies to reduce drought impacts, and formulating proactive measures for drought risk management.

To advance in this direction, existing global approaches and frameworks for risk, impact, and vulnerability assessment must be taken at the country level and integrated into relevant national policies. Additionally, valuable methods and significant experiences adopted by countries need to be shared for mutual learning.

The digital “Compendium on drought impact and vulnerability” developed by FAO addresses these objectives comprehensively. Designed in a user-friendly web-based format, the compendium highlights the evolution of drought risk, impact, and vulnerability concepts and presents guidelines for conducting related assessments. In line with benchmarking global approaches, it emphasizes the importance of gender-sensitive analysis and provides sample impact and vulnerability indicators and data sources. Furthermore, it includes a series of country reports to showcase pathways of impact and vulnerability at the national scale.

The compendium is an invaluable resource for policy- and decision-makers and a broad range of drought stakeholders, to support the review process of national drought plans and contribute to their implementation.

Browse the compendium here >>>