Do global risk assessments leave countries behind? How the selection of countries influences outcomes of drought risk assessments

Abstract

Global drought risk assessments have been conducted with the objective of highlighting the regions or countries most at risk, and their outcomes are deemed useful to inform decisions on the implementation of risk reduction, transfer, financing, and adaptation strategies. However, by virtue of the scale of the assessment, some countries and regions experiencing negative impacts of droughts may not appear in “high” risk categories in global comparisons. This limits and potentially biases the ability of decision-makers, regional organisations, or funding mechanisms to recognise which countries under their purview should be targeted for assistance. This paper addresses this gap by comparing the outcomes of global and regional drought risk assessments for different clusters of countries of particular relevance to international climate and disaster risk policy. Results show that 50 countries changed the risk category to “high” or “very high” in their clusters compared to a lower risk category at the global level, due to the renormalisation of raw indicator values with different ranges for each cluster. The findings highlight the importance of analysing risk at multiple spatial scales to ensure no country is “left behind” in global risk and adaptation finance decisions.