In the sub-Saharan African countries, pressures from climate change, land degradation and increasing populations converge to create local, national and regional challenges to water and food security. Building Research Capacity for Sustainable Water and Food Security in Drylands of sub-Saharan Africa (BRECcIA) is one of the projects to address these issues. BRECcIA is working with IHP to understand the potential of rainwater harvesting for addressing water scarcity in some regions.
Though droughts are natural events, there is an increasing understanding of how humans have amplified their severity and worsened their effects on both the environment and human populations. Humans have altered both meteorological droughts through human-induced climate change and hydrological droughts through management of water movement and processes within a landscape, such as by diverting rivers or changing land use. In the Anthropocene (the ongoing period in which humans are the dominant influence on climate and the environment), droughts are closely entwined with human actions, cultures and responses.
This series of videos explains the effects of drought all around the world through the presentation of case studies.
They are the result of the work of UNESCO’s International Hydrological Programme (IHP) in partnership with GRID-Arendal, the University of Southampton and the U.S. National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS).
