The variability in the size of Lake Chad poses challenges to development and food security that threaten to tip the region’s acute vulnerability into crisis. To support the management of resources and understanding of the hydrological dynamics in the region, a flood and drought monitoring system has been developed by UNESCO’s International Hydrological Programme (IHP), Princeton University, University of Southampton and Princeton Climate Analytics within the framework of the BIOPALT project.

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 Hydrologica Programme (IHP) in partnership with GRID-Arendal, the University of Southampton and the U.S. National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS).

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