Asia-Pacific Drought Risk Dialogue: Transforming institutional drought risk management for resilience

 ‘Transforming institutional drought risk management for resilience - The GAR Special Report on Drought 2021’

Date: 27 July 2021

Time:  11:30 - 13:00 Delhi Time / 13:00 - 14:30 Bangkok Time / 16:00 - 17:30 Sydney Time / 18:00 – 19:30 Fiji Time

‘The Asia-Pacific Drought Risk Dialogue’ will unpack the latest findings on drought risk management from the Asia-Pacific Region, as featured in the GAR Special Report on Drought 2021. The webinar will present two case studies from the region, Australia and India, to share the lessons learned, highlight the challenges of a reactive approach to drought, and illustrate the urgent need for proactive drought risk management.

The first case will feature the multiple and multiplicative drought impacts across all sectors and ecosystems in Australia, based on the Millennium drought 1997-2009 and the subsequent evolution in policy, governance, and financial strategies.

The second case will feature the frequent recurrent droughts in the Indian Deccan plateau region and the challenges of institutional drought risk management treating drought as discrete, episodic and outlier events even if they are frequent and result in the aggravation of drought vulnerabilities, agrarian crisis and natural resource degradation.

The Drought Risk Dialogue will feature policy recommendations from the GAR Special Report on Drought 2021, which calls for proactive action to reduce drought risks. Thinking ahead and acting in advance of drought has far lower costs than reacting and responding to the impacts once drought hits.

The event is tailored towards practitioners and policy makers working in drought risk and water management in the region, who will have the opportunity to ask questions to the authors of the report in a Q&A session following the panel discussion on the main findings.