The World Health Organization defines a drought as “a prolonged dry period in the natural climate cycle that can occur anywhere in the world.” While widespread and naturally occurring, droughts impact certain regions far more drastically than others, and they do so with rapidly increasing frequency and intensity due to climate change. Rising temperatures elevate rates of soil moisture evaporation, which in turn decreases plant cover that could capture rainfall in dry areas. Climate change alters precipitation patterns, causing less rainfall overall in certain regions, and also affecting snowpack and melt, which diminishes the water supply. Areas that are already relatively dry, like the subtropics, will in coming years experience worsening droughts, while relatively wet places like the tropics will experience increased precipitation.
While some of the areas impacted by worsening drought conditions are located in the developed world, like the United States Southwest, most impacted regions are South and Southeast Asia—countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Cambodia, and Laos, which are under the monsoon climatic zone. In Indonesia, 92% of the country experienced drought due to El Niño last year, impacting nearly 50 million people. Water scarcity impacts 40% of the world’s population.
Severe droughts, exacerbated by global warming conditions, affect every aspect of society, including the agricultural industry, transportation, energy, and public health. Droughts decimate the growth of crops like wheat, soybeans, and corn, some of which are necessary to support livestock and some are necessary for human consumption. This results in food price instability, social unrest, and famine. Droughts are costly for the transportation sector because a certain water level in waterways is necessary for transport barges to effectively ship goods, and water levels drop in droughts. Roads also crumble from prolonged exposure to dry heat, deteriorating crucial infrastructure. Electric grids strain under increased demand during heat waves, and the availability of hydroelectric power decreases during droughts. Yet perhaps the most alarming human impact of droughts is in public health.
Droughts in less developed areas can disturb local health services due to a lack of water, which is especially troubling considering the worsening in various health conditions that droughts lead to in effected populations. The WHO reports that droughts can cause:
- malnutrition due to the decreased availability of food, including micronutrient deficiency, such as iron-deficiency anaemia
- increased risk of infectious diseases, such as cholera, diarrhea, and pneumonia, due to acute malnutrition, lack of water and sanitation, and displacement
- increased health risk in people already impacted by lung diseases, like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), or by heart disease, due to lower air quality in connection with wildfires and dust storms from droughts.
- psycho-social stress and mental health disorders
In many cases, the above conditions make certain regions unlivable. Thus droughts exacerbated by global warming contribute to the growing problem of climate migration. Up to 700 million people are at risk of being displaced by droughts alone within the next ten years—a number that contributes to the total of migrants fleeing other climate disasters and political instability. The UN reports that “new displacement patterns, and competition over depleted natural resources can spark conflict between communities or compound pre-existing vulnerabilities.” In this way, people displaced by climate issues can be categorized as refugees and receive the international protections entitled to this group. The overlap between climate migrants and those traditionally thought of as refugees is significant, with many people displaced by political and other conflicts facing a secondary displacement because they live in climate change “hotspots.” As long as droughts and other climate issues persist and worsen, such groups cannot return to their home areas, sometimes putting a strain on regional political relations and the distribution of resources. Migration itself can have a negative environmental impact, with refugee settlements built for temporary usage being an unsustainable model of community building.
While it is people in developing countries who most directly experience the effects of climate change, it is the developed world—places like Europe and the United States, which caused much of the environmental degradation that contribute to the rising number of climate disasters. As the cause of these interconnected issues, it should be the responsibility of top-emitting countries to aid governments struggling with the effects of climate change—whether that entails supporting programs to combat the droughts and other such events directly, financing repairs, or giving aid to climate refugees. There are several ways that the effect of droughts in particular can be mitigated: conserving water and enhancing water efficiency in city plans, making available alternative water supplies, planting drought-resistant crops, and increasing energy efficiency in buildings so that less water-cooled power is used to begin with. However, many of these are much more feasible in places like the Southwest U.S. than in rural Indonesia, for example, and all present only superficial solutions to a complex problem.
Worsening droughts are an economic, political, and environmental issue, but most of all, it is a human one—a problem that will continue to take and disrupt lives with alarming rapidity until the underlying cause of climate change is addressed. Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would simultaneously address each of the contributing factors not only to drought conditions, but also to wildfires and hurricanes, and to so many other destructive forces. Substantial progress in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement is the only humane way forward.