OVERVIEW

Drought is a recurring climatic event: it always comes back. The ability of the governments and international relief agencies to deal with droughts in southwest Asia region is, however, constrained by the absence of reliable data, information networks, as well as professional and institutional capacities. There is thus a need for a large-scale assessment of how countries in the region deal with droughts, what drought monitoring mechanisms, if any, are employed, what relevant institutional elements are missing and what potential for drought mitigation exist in the region in the long-term.

The drought assessment and mitigation Project focuses primarily on parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan and western India. The Project analyzes hydro-meteorological and human factors involved, conducts the reviews of the existing drought coping and management experiences in the region and identifies the existing knowledge gaps. The study is viewed as a quick survey of regional drought research and management in order to undertake a longer-term,coordinated regional anti-drought program in the future.

The project has several components, topical and geographical, which together effectively form the project matrix:

DROUGHT FREQUENCY & MAGNITUDE ANALYSIS

This component of the project focuses on regional analysis of drought indices and their use in drought monitoring and management. It intends, amongst the others to:

• Identify suitable drought indices, which could be applied consistently over the region for drought monitoring and calculation of various drought characteristics. The indices considered should take into account that ground observations on hydrometeorological variables (input to calculation of indices) in the region are limited.
• Develop the software for various drought indices calculation, display and analysis.
• Examine the relationships between drought indices, calculated from ground observations (e.g. rainfall), with drought indices used in Remote Sensing  component. In parts of the region little or no ground observations in recent years were made. Also, for effective near real-time drought monitoring, observed rainfall data are also required in real time. On-line acquisition of such data may be problematic. In such circumstances, RS monitoring may appear to be the only possible real-time option. However, to test and verify its predictions, the available past rainfall data can be analyzed jointly with past RS images.
• Examine the extremity of the past droughts (as predicted by drought indices) in terms of drought impacts on economic variables (employment, wages, poverty, etc) and efficiency of drought relief programs. This provides a link with the results of socio-economic studies and should allow a better understanding of the quantitative side of drought impacts in different parts of the region. It should also assist in determining where, when and which drought management measure, plan or intervention to implement.

USE OF REMOTE SENSING DATA FOR DROUGHT MONITORING

The need for quantifying, monitoring and reporting the progress of droughts is of critical importance in politically, economically and environmentally sensitive countries of southwest Asia, like Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Iran.Currently, there is no systematic and timely approach for drought assessment and reporting in the region. The inherent physical lack or/and unavailability of the existing ground climate data in the region preclude the development of ground-data based drought monitoring systems. On the other hand, current remote sensing data and technologies should allow such system for the entire region to be developed (and tested against limited climate data on the ground).

The monitoring system being developed uses available data from the NOAA AVHRR and MODIS-Terra/Aqua satellite sensors. These data are freely and timely available and therefore the system can operate in near real time – without delays normally associated with getting the required ground climate data from national agencies.

The spatial resolution of the system is 500 m. The temporal resolution is 8 or 16 days. These are the characteristics of the MODIS images, on which the system is based.Such detailed spatial resolution will allow monitoring to be done to the level of districts and other small administrative or geographic subdivisions within countries.

The system is based on several drought-related indices derived from remote sensing images. These will include normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), vegetation condition index (VCI), temperature condition index (TCI) and some others. For more information see drought indices.

The prototype system -South West Asia Drought Monitor can be accessed here.The first report describing the theory behind the system is available under Publications. 

SOCIO-ECONOMIC STUDIES

Socio-economic studies are carried out in two main directions: i) analysis of drought impacts and coping strategies at community and household levels and ii) analysis of drought-related policies and institutions. At the first level, the studies focus on coping strategies adopted by communities in different countries, on impacts which droughts have on different population groups. The studies survey the perceptions of people about drought phenomenon, about drought proofing and relief programs. At the second level, the studies focus primarily on the analysis of gaps in existing drought-related policies, analysis of statistical socio-economic information pertaining to the past droughts in selected provinces/states. The results of socio-economic studies will be related with the hydrometeorological analyses to determine what happens on the ground during the droughts of different extremities and extent and how relevant policies in countries can be approved or developed to alleviate drought effects in the future.

In Pakistan, socio-economic survey has been conducted by IWMI-Pakistan in two provinces: Sindh and Balochistan. From each province, two drought-hit districts are selected. One district is primarily rain-fed and another – irrigated. Altogether, about 20 villages and 300 households constitute the total sample size for this study in Pakistan. Agencies and departments that are working in drought affected areas have also been interviewed. Information has been collected on livelihood differentiation by classes, castes, ethnicity, gender, etc., on understanding of droughts, effects of droughts on village communities and personal security, drought relief and mitigation measures and role of the government and NGO’s in drought mitigation programs.

In India, a community-level study (impacts and coping strategies) has been conducted by Sewa Mandir in the state of Rajastan.This was complemented by the state-level review and assessment of drought impacts and policies, carried out by the Institute of Development Studies. The later explored the impacts of droughts on production, employment, wages, farm incomes etc at the state level, examines existing laws, regulations and policies for managing droughts, issues related to politics of drought and links between drought impacts and development.A survey of drought-coping strategies and impacts of latest droughts on rural population in Afghanistan has been conducted in villages of Helmand and Kandaghar Provinces in collaboration with Water Management Department of the Agricultural University in Peshawar (North West Frontier Province –NWFP, Pakistan). 5 villages in each Province were visited and in total about 150 respondents from both provinces were interviewed. The methodology was similar to that used in Pakistan, but the survey questionnaire was modified to suit the local conditions.

A similar survey has been conducted by the CRS-Afghanistan in Ghowr and Badghis provinces.Preliminary results of the socio-economic survey are available under Publications.