By Catherine Gamper, Sophie Lavaud and Agnes Szuda, OECD Environment Directorate

17 June marks the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, a year after unprecedented droughts plagued regions across the world. In Europe, the Po River basin – Italy’s breadbasket – faced the worst drought in 70 years, after rainfall in early 2022 was about half of the yearly average of the past 30 years and caused an estimated EUR 6 billion in damages to agricultural sector. The low water levels on European rivers reduced hydroelectric and nuclear power production in many countries. Romania’s biggest energy producer generated a third less hydropower in early 2022 than usual. The river Danube flowed at less than half of its typical summer volume, leaving dozens of cargo ships motionless. Low levels on the river Rhine – on which 160 million tons of goods are transported every year – forced vessels to reduce their load and companies to find road or train transport alternatives, disrupting industrial production in Germany’s Ruhr region.

Projections also show that 74% of Spain’s territory is at risk of desertification if water management does not dramatically change current trends. At the same time, the Horn of Africa experienced its fifth consecutive dry year and over 20 million people in the region required food and water assistance to fight starvation. Droughts are clearly affecting people’s lives in different regions, with uneven consequences and social inequalities in the distribution of climate impacts.

Climate change is amplifying droughts occurrence and severity
The duration, frequency and severity of droughts has increased since 1950 in many areas of the world. In Europe, the number of areas and people affected by droughts rose by 20% between 1976 and 2006.

The IPCC confirms the increasingly well-established attribution effect of climate change on droughts. Climate change-induced temperature rise was found to have made the 2022 Northern Hemisphere droughts 5 to 20 times more likely and the ongoing drought in eastern Africa at least 100 times more likely.

While 2022 was a harsh year, in the context of climate change, more severe and longer droughts are projected to occur in the future in many regions of the world. Agricultural and ecological droughts that used to occur once every 10 years are projected to occur twice as often – even in (an increasingly unlikely) low warming scenario of 1.5°C in drying regions (Figure). Drought-induced water scarcity is projected to affect up to 3 billion people in 2050 under 3°C global warming scenario and up to 4 billion under 4°C, doubling the currently estimated affected number of people. Furthermore, it is estimated that by 2030, 700 million people will be at risk of being displaced by droughts. READ further from the source