The global impact of drought on human life.

The United Nations Development Program UNDP found that drought is the most important natural hazard in terms of human mortality. Seven of the ten most drought prone countries in Africa are the same countries that have also suffered most from either armed conflicts or political instability, with over fifty million people affected by severe drought for the past two decades. Drought exposure in these countries renders households much more vulnerable to the impacts of political unrest and economic disaster. Drought is not limited to Africa. Twelve million Afghanis have been exposed to persistent drought in the last decade clearly exacerbating the conflict in that region. In Asia, 22.6 million persons now have inadequate drinking water supplies due to drought. In India 130 million persons have been exposed to drought in the past two years.

Drought is the single most important weather-related natural disaster since it affects very large areas for months, even years, and thus has a serious impact on regional food production, often reducing life expectancy for entire populations and economic performance of large regions or several countries. During 1967-1991, droughts affected 50 percent of the 2.8 billion people who suffered from all natural disasters and killed 35 percent of the 3.5 million people who lost their lives to natural disasters. In addition, subsidence of buildings, engineering works and relief measures following droughts involve high costs. In the current decade - which was proclaimed the Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction by the United Nations - large-scale intensive droughts have been observed on all continents, leading to:

massive economic losses
destruction of ecological resources
food shortages
starvation for millions of people

Drought to impact Australian growth forecast, 18th December 2006, 15:00 WST

Australia’s worst drought in over 100 years will force Treasurer Peter Costello to cut his economic growth forecast in Wednesday’s mid-year budget review.
A report by the government’s commodities forecaster on Monday highlighted the damage the drought will inflict on the country’s farm sector and revenue from rural exports.
A couple of things have changed very significantly since we brought down the budget. Of course the biggest is the drought,” Mr Costello said.
The drought is much more severe than anybody anticipated back in May and that will have an effect on growth.”

With all of this in mind the research at ClimaTrends long range forecasting service points to a significant chance of a crippling drought for the corn and soybean growing areas in the High Plains and Midwest of the United States in the summer of 2007. A beneficial spring pattern should turn abruptly in the summer to a prolonged dry and hot pattern. See the entry on drought charts for a set of charts that depicts the probable temperature and precipitation anomalies for the coming spring and summer of 2007.