The increasing frequency and severity of drought events have been urging countries to strengthen their preparedness and build resilience. Central Asia, being an arid region, is exposed to climate extremes, including drought. Drought has a direct and cascading impact in the region, affecting, inter alia, the irrigated agriculture sector, the livestock sector, and the energy sector. To effectively mitigate the impact of drought, it is crucial to consider all possible probabilities when planning for drought management. The complexity of drought events and their far-reaching impacts require rigorous planning that considers the “multi” nature of drought. The planning should address the three pillars of integrated drought management: (i) monitoring and early warning; (ii) vulnerability and impact assessment; and (iii) mitigation, response, and preparedness. Plans should support the paradigm shift to proactive, risk management. Drought management must be planned in an overarching and flexible manner that can accommodate the constantly evolving environment.
The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) established the Drought Initiative. The Drought Initiative rolled out a large-scale programme to support the development of national drought plans. Since its beginning, substantial experience has accumulated, which can guide the newly acceding members in the planning process. The protocol established by the UNCCD and its partners, as well as the technical knowledge resources provided by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) are fundamental for building capacities resilience-building and establishing comprehensive plans.
Organized under the framework of the FAO-GEF project "Integrated natural resources management in drought prone and salt affected agricultural landscapes in Central Asia and Türkiye - CACILM2", the objective of the workshop is to increase understanding of planning for integrated drought management and initiate peer-to-peer learning amongst countries and technical organizations. The workshop will gather technical experts from Central Asia to review knowledge resources and approaches to drought planning, based on state-of-art methods, models and techniques. The goal is to equip technical experts with the capacity to identify resources and select the best-fitting approaches to formulate a drought plan. The workshop is structured around the planning steps described as follows:
- an overview of the pre-conditions of drought planning and the preparatory steps;
- evaluation approaches to the alignment to sector-specific policy frameworks and the coordination of institutional stakeholders;
- stocktaking of estimation methods and indices to design monitoring and early-warning systems for drought, and showcasing relevant monitoring systems and infrastructure;
- an introduction of diversified methods for risk, vulnerability and impact assessments;
- an inventory of mitigation and preparedness measures to construct action plans;
- rapid insight into the financial planning for drought.