All publications and documents

Disasters – from droughts and dust storms to hurricanes and floods – are becoming more frequent and more severe as our planet warms. They bring a high cost to human life, economies, and ecosystems. But how we deal with these disasters is not keeping pace. Drought, for example, affects every region of our globe. In the last few months, North Korea saw its worst drought in 37 years, Alaska saw its…

Protecting mountain ecosystems, promoting the sustainable use of natural resources and ensuring food security are all global priorities. To this end, Sustainable Development Goal 15 aims to promote actions that ensure the sound and sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems by promoting actions to control land degradation and maintain healthy vegetation cover. In 2018, action was…

These technical guidelines present practical information for supporting the development and implementation of national drought resilience, adaptation and management plans. The accompanying Drought Resilience, Adaptation and Management Policy (DRAMP) Framework documents the recent evolution of drought viewed in the context of disaster risk reduction and proposes a framework that integrates…

This policy brief summarizes findings from a rapid preliminary review of available approaches to drought impact and vulnerability assessment. The review draws on experiences from different parts of the world. Recommendations focus on the policy needs to enable proactive assessment approaches that can include vulnerable people and work across sectors, scales and timeframes. Why assess…

National policies should take a proactive approach to direct and coordinate drought vulnerability assessments with vulnerable groups. This rapid review explores the application of available approaches and methods for assessing drought impacts and vulnerability. It is based on a series of interviews with expert practitioners from different drought-affected regions of the world. This was…

This paper examines the operability of the Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) concept in a developing country context illustrated with the case of Nigeria, a country highly ranked as undergoing biomass degradation. While LDN offers an approach to monitor land degradation, through net-gain in land cover, land productivity and soil organic carbon, its operationalisation poses methodological,…