Drought is one of the major drivers of global food and water insecurity, affecting agricultural production and access to food and water. Drought can, in extreme cases, force people to abandon their land, resorting to migration as their last livelihood strategy, making the prospect of ending hunger and malnutrition by 2030 more difficult.

Land management practices offer opportunities for mitigating the effects of drought and, more generally, refocusing actions on “proactive drought risk management”. It also increases the resilience of people and ecosystems to drought. An improved understanding of the relationship between land management and drought mitigation is urgently needed in order to improve the targeting and monitoring of interventions and policies.