Drought Policy Research Articles

Are Policy Entrepreneurs Really Decisive in Achieving Policy Change? Drought Policy in the USA and Australia

In his work on policy development, John Kingdon discusses the role of “policy entrepreneurs” in advocating particular solutions to policy problems. This article discusses a group of policy entrepreneurs in the US who have been actively seeking to shift drought policy away from a crisis response towards an approach based on risk management. The case is discussed by comparison with the development of Australian drought policy which has taken a risk management approach since 1992. Drought policy in Australia has largely been developed in a top‐down fashion while in the US policy advocacy has been more bottom‐up. This case highlights a key point that Kingdon and others have made, that policy entrepreneurs cannot succeed alone in achieving policy change, and raises the question as to whether the concept of “policy entrepreneurs” is useful beyond being an appealing descriptor of influential but not decisive agents in the policy process.

The Multiple Meanings of ‘Resilience’: An Overview of the Literature

‘resilience is in danger of becoming a vacuous buzzword from overuse and ambiguity’ (Rose 2007: 384)‘Resilience’ is widely used in public policy debate in Australia in contexts as diverse as drought policy, mental fitness in the Australian Defence Force, and in discussion around the Australian economy's performance during the global financial crisis. The following paper provides an overview of the use of the term ‘resilience’ in the academic literature in both the natural and social sciences. The key conclusion from this research is that the term is highly ambiguous, it is used for different purposes in different contexts and in some cases the understandings of the term are diametrically opposed. The malleability of the term suggests that it might be politically risky if employed in policy debate unless clearly defined in each instance.

Shifting Constructions of Scarcity and the Neoliberalization of Australian Water Governance

This paper examines the discursive construction of water scarcity and its role in the establishment and ongoing legitimacy of Australia's market environmentalist water reforms. It shows that climate was the dominant explanation for scarcity crises in Australia until the reforms commenced in the early 1990s, when it was overtaken by mismanagement. Since 2007 climate change has become increasingly prominent, particularly as a discourse explaining future water crises. Drawing on interviews with policymakers and analysis of water policy, it shows that the discourse of mismanagement has played a significant role in justifying the ongoing application of neoliberal policy mechanisms in Australia. Unlike in most accounts from other countries, in Australia neoliberalization has been facilitated by a discursive denaturalization of water scarcity. Yet, despite the reformers' success in mobilizing scarcity in support of neoliberal agendas, collectivist goals continue to have traction, which is visible both in the failure of the National Drought Policy just before the reforms commenced, and particularly as climate change has become discursively prominent since 2007. This points to the utility of studying the neoliberalization of nature in Australia, confirms the dependence of market environmentalism on real or discursively constructed resource scarcity, and highlights the malleability and incompleteness of neoliberal natures.

The Global Drought Monitor Portal: The Foundation for a Global Drought Information System

Abstract The international scientific community has long recognized the need for coordinated drought monitoring and response, but many factors have prevented progress in the development of a Global Drought Early Warning System (GDEWS): some of which involve administrative issues (coordinated international action and policy) while others involve scientific, technological, and logistical issues. The creation of the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) Portal within the United States provided an opportunity to take the first steps toward building the informational foundation for a GDEWS: that is, a Global Drought Information System (GDIS). At a series of workshops sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and Group on Earth Observations (GEO) held in Asheville, North Carolina, in April 2010, it was recommended that a modular approach be taken in the creation of a GDIS and that the NIDIS Portal serve as the foundation for the GDIS structure. Once a NIDIS-based Global Drought Monitor (GDM) Portal (GDMP) established an international drought clearinghouse, the various components of a GDIS (drought monitoring, forecasting, impacts, history, research, and education) and later a GDEWS (drought relief, recovery, and planning) could be constructed atop it. The NIDIS Portal is a web-based information system created to address drought services and early warning in the United States, including drought monitoring, forecasting, impacts, mitigation, research, and education. This portal utilizes Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) web mapping services (WMS) to incorporate continental drought monitors into the GDMP. As of early 2012, the GDM has incorporated continental drought information for North America (North American Drought Monitor), Europe (European Drought Observatory), and Africa (African Drought Monitor developed by Princeton University); interest has been expressed by groups representing Australia and South America; and coordination with appropriate parties in Asia is also expected. Because of the range of climates across the world and the diverse nature of drought and the sectors it impacts, the construction and functioning of each continental drought monitor needs to be appropriate for the continent in question. The GDMP includes a suite of global drought indicators identified by experts and adopted by the WMO as the necessary measures to examine drought from a meteorological standpoint; these global drought indicators provide a base to assist the global integration and interpretation of the continental drought monitors. The GDMP has been included in recent updates to the GEO Work Plan and has benefited from substantial coordination with WMO on both their Global Framework for Climate Services and the National Drought Policy efforts. The GDMP is recognized as having the potential to be a major contributor to both of these activities.

Drought risk assessment using remote sensing and GIS techniques

Beginning with a discussion of drought definitions, this review paper attempts to provide a review of fundamental concepts of drought, classification of droughts, drought indices, and the role of remote sensing and geographic information systems for drought evaluation. Owing to the rise in water demand and looming climate change, recent years have witnessed much focus on global drought scenarios. As a natural hazard, drought is best characterized by multiple climatological and hydrological parameters. An understanding of the relationships between these two sets of parameters is necessary to develop measures for mitigating the impacts of droughts. Droughts are recognized as an environmental disaster and have attracted the attention of environmentalists, ecologists, hydrologists, meteorologists, geologists, and agricultural scientists. Temperatures; high winds; low relative humidity; and timing and characteristics of rains, including distribution of rainy days during crop growing seasons, intensity, and duration of rain, and onset and termination, play a significant role in the occurrence of droughts. In contrast to aridity, which is a permanent feature of climate and is restricted to low rainfall areas, a drought is a temporary aberration. Often, there is confusion between a heat wave and a drought, and the distinction is emphasized between heat wave and drought, noting that a typical time scale associated with a heat wave is on the order of a week, while a drought may persist for months or even years. The combination of a heat wave and a drought has dire socio-economic consequences. Drought risk is a product of a region’s exposure to the natural hazard and its vulnerability to extended periods of water shortage. If nations and regions are to make progress in reducing the serious consequences of drought, they must improve their understanding of the hazard and the factors that influence vulnerability. It is critical for drought-prone regions to better understand their drought climatology (i.e., the probability of drought at different levels of intensity and duration) and establish comprehensive and integrated drought information system that incorporates climate, soil, and water supply factors such as precipitation, temperature, soil moisture, snow pack, reservoir and lake levels, ground water levels, and stream flow. All drought-prone nations should develop national drought policies and preparedness plans that place emphasis on risk management rather than following the traditional approach of crisis management, where the emphasis is on reactive, emergency response measures. Crisis management decreases self-reliance and increases dependence on government and donors.

Coping with Drought among the Communities Living in the Lake Victoria Basin of Kenya

Drought is of great concern throughout the continent of Africa because of its devastating effects that it has inflicted on the economy of some of the countries. Drought has been recorded to be one of the most felt disasters in recent years in Kenya. The drought that affected Kenya in the year 2000 and 2010 was indeed remarkable in that the country resorted to loss of lives, loss of livestock, power rationing and drying of agricultural crops among other problems. This study developed a technique to depict spatially, the extent, relative severity and location of areas mostly affected by drought in the Lake Victoria basin of Kenya. This was done using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) plots and maps developed using the Geographical Information System (GIS) software. The indices were generated using the C++ program. NDVI indices revealed that most parts of the basin were moderately dry throughout the year. The study investigated the impacts of drought in the area by use of questionnaires and interviews. The impacts identified were mainly crop failure, depletion of water resources and lack of pasture for livestock. The complex and multidimensional nature of drought requires a long term, well-organized and coordinated research plan and action involving all the stakeholders. This study summarized coping strategies adopted by the communities living within the Lake Victoria basin to mitigate drought phenomenon. Some of the strategies include; planting of drought resistant crops, food storage sharing and purchasing of food among others. Recommendations have been suggested for policy makers, planners and agriculturalists to implement to improve agricultural output in a drought prone area like the Lake Victoria Basin of Kenya. In particular, the study highly recommends development of a comprehensive drought policy to be implemented in managing drought in Kenya.

China's drought strategies in rural areas along the Lancang River

Given that climate change is likely to exacerbate drought in certain parts of the world, a critical issue is how appropriate context-relevant drought policy can be developed and implemented. This paper examines how China is developing policies to help local communities in the Lancang River Basin to cope with the problems of climate variability and change. The research process includes (a) content analysis of relevant policies at different levels of administration and (b) stakeholder interviews to examine how effective policies are at the local level along the Lancang River in Yunnan province. The paper concludes that China needs to provide more emphasis on (a) enhancing the adaptive capacity of institutions and individuals, (b) drought risk rather than disaster management, (c) enhancing coordination between different departments and levels of government, (d) decentralization in policymaking as local governments can make context-relevant comprehensive policies more easily and are less hierarchical in their relationships, (e) involving farmers or other stakeholders in decision making, (f) building up grass root organizations to support policy implementation to compensate for the retreat of governmental organizations from the local level and (g) adopting market mechanisms which are still in a nascent stage now.

Short‐Term Emergency or Recurring Climatic Extreme: A Rural Town Perspective on Drought Policy and Programs

Drought is most often encountered as a long‐running and recurring climatic extreme; one that can have devastating environmental, social and economic impacts. While drought is a routine feature of the Australian climate, the politics of drought are often highly reactive, and drought support programs are notoriously ad hoc and ineffective. In the context of emergent global recognition of climate change, drought has received renewed political attention that presents significant opportunities for change. In this paper, we review the context of drought policy in Australia. Yet we seek to provide a unique contribution to current debates by considering the perspectives of those people at the forefront of drought; in particular, those people living and working in small rural towns in drought‐affected areas. The aim of the paper is to use a case study to present an account of drought policies and programs from those who are the targets of such interventions.

Drought triggers and declarations: science and policy considerations for drought risk management

This paper explores the value of triggers and declarations in the management of drought, bringing together two disciplinary perspectives, those of the public policy scholar and the climate scientist. These two perspectives highlight the complexity of the development and use of triggers in drought risk management by drawing on the experience of the United States, which has the most sophisticated system of drought triggers in the world, and that of Australia that has the most developed and longest standing national drought policy based on principles of risk management. The paper explores the advantages and disadvantages of triggers in managing drought, concluding that triggers are useful risk management tools at the individual level but become problematic and can lead to perverse outcomes when linked to some forms of government support programs.

Innovative Sustainable Drought Management Strategy Incorporating Forensic Techniques and Policy Framework

The ever-growing human population and the changing food habits of the expanding middle class in emerging economies with more and more advanced technological needs, along with foreseeable changes in climate (global warming) due to intensified human activity may exacerbate the occurrence and magnitude of droughts all over the world. Both this generation and future generations are left vulnerable to droughts that could have serious global consequences. Droughts are already an integral part of global climate variability, but their impact can be mitigated significantly by proactive risk management planning and preparedness emphasizing increase in water supplies with appropriate reduction in demands, strengthening regulatory framework, education, emergency responses and community rehabilitation services. Sustainable mitigation initiatives are needed to protect life and manage risks and damages to property, agriculture, industries, ecological biodiversity and natural resources. Forensic applications can help in many ways, for example, to understand interaction between components of hydrologic cycle, to determine their origin and history, in land use classification, to locate recharge areas, and in the management of water quality, as well as to determine the time of release, to identify the sources of pollution and dominant ongoing biochemical reactions, to resolve disputes, and to synthesize missing historic data that are so critical in the planning for worst droughts. Weather forecasting capabilities can reduce uncertainties and help in drought preparedness and mitigation strategies. This article reviews global weather pattern and interactions as well as coupled ocean-land-atmosphere phenomenon (El Niño Southern Oscillation and/or La Niña [ENSO] ENSO) causing interannual global climate variability, drought preparedness planning and policies, and mitigation strategies to conserve water, enhance water use efficiencies, to promote sustainable socioeconomic development, and to preserve values of natural resources. Potential applications of classic and emerging forensic fingerprinting techniques and materials to enhance and harness diverse sources of water and address growing water needs now and in the future are also discussed. Finally, an innovative sustainable drought management strategy is proposed.

“Living from Day to Day”: Food Insecurity, Complexity, and Coping in Mutare, Zimbabwe

In Zimbabwe, unpredictable conditions associated with structural and institutional factors exacerbated the combined effects of structural violence, economic and political instability, and climate change in the mid 2000s, contributing to widespread food insecurity. Drought, food shortages, and government settlement policy affecting both rural and urban populations has yielded a national human rights crisis. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Mutare, southeast Zimbabwe, in 2005–2006, the authors illustrate the flow-on effects of drought and government policy on the livelihoods of households already suffering as a result of the social impacts of AIDS, and how people in a regional city responded to these factors, defining and meeting their basic food needs in diverse ways.

Assessment of rainfall and potential evaporation from global climate models and its implications for Australian regional drought projection

AbstractThere is likely to be an increase in the area of the globe affected by drought under enhanced greenhouse gas conditions. Therefore water management and drought policy may need to be modified accordingly. Rainfall and potential evapotranspiration (PET) are the key factors defining meteorological drought, and the development of drought projections is facilitated by global climate model (GCM) simulations. This paper assesses how well a set of GCMs can reproduce observed characteristics of historical rainfall and PET on a regional basis and explores the implications for regional drought projections if the poorer performing GCMs are omitted. Fourteen of the GCMs used in the IPCC's 4th Assesment Report are considered and their results compared with 1951–2006 observed rainfall and PET over Australia. The results indicate that some GCMs can reproduce the observed spatial patterns of both the means and variability (represented as the coefficient of variation), but most GCMs fail to reproduce the linear long‐term trends. There is less clear difference between the better and poorer GCMs at a national level, but there is a clearer distinction at the regional level. The omission of the poorer GCMs leads to a clearer sign of the likely change (either increase or decrease) in future drought intensity in some regions. It also results in a decreased range of model‐to‐model uncertainty in some regions. It is hoped such uncertainty reduction can be useful to end users, particularly for those dealing with water management. Copyright © 2010 Royal Meteorological Society

Balancing Compassion and Risk in Climate Adaptation: U.S. Water, Drought and Agricultural Law

This article compares risk spreading and risk reduction approaches to climate adaptation. Because of the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from past practices, the world is committed to a significant amount of global average warming. This is likely to lead to significant increases in the frequency, severity and geographic extent of drought. Adaptation to these and other problems caused by climate disruption will be essential even if steps are taken now to mitigate that disruption. Water and drought policy provide an example of the significant policy tension between compassion and risk reduction in climate adaptation, and how those tensions affect broader national economic policies. Because water is essential to lives and livelihoods, the compassionate response to drought is to provide financial and other forms of relief. Guaranteed, unconditional drought relief, however, can encourage unsustainable water uses and practices that increase vulnerability to drought in the long-term. Moreover, the agricultural sector is the largest consumptive user of water in drought-prone regions, but longstanding U.S. agricultural policy encourages excess production and water use. Effective adaptation to climate disruption will have to strike a balance between providing essential short-term relief from hardship and promoting longer-term measures to reduce vulnerability through more sustainable water use and other practices. It will also require fundamental reconsideration of laws and policies that drive key economic sectors that will be affected by climate disruption. Although water, drought and agricultural law provide one good example of this tension, the same lessons are likely to apply to other sectors of the economy vulnerable to climate disruption, such as real estate development and energy production.

Briefing: Drought and structural adjustment in Australia

This briefing paper reviews Australian policy experience in managing drought and structural adjustment policies. It finds that government assistance can often do more harm than good at the individual, regional and national level. Challenging conventional wisdom, the paper concludes that the emphasis should be on mechanisms that encourage autonomous adjustment and avoid masking information that signals the extent of the need to change and the need to plan for droughts. Business assistance should be avoided. When assistance is offered, it should be delivered as welfare assistance and encourage those willing to exit the agricultural sector to do so.

Drought policy in Australia: gender mainstreaming or gender blindness?

Australia is experiencing a major drought, one that has devastated the landscape and people for up to ten years. This major disaster has accelerated ongoing rural restructuring and created changes in the way farm family members order and live their lives. Yet despite evidence that drought is a gendered experience, that is, that generally women and men experience and respond to drought differently, and despite a rhetorical move to gender mainstreaming in Australian policy circles, drought policy remains significantly gender blind. In this article I use the example of emergency support to poverty stricken farm families to show how agricultural departments that attend to a notional norm of family farming as a unitary male pursuit can actively discriminate against women in their efforts to preserve the farm and support their families. The article exposes gender mainstreaming as an ‘empty signifier’ that is contextually grounded and that its success is highly dependent on making these issues transparent. For gender equity efforts to reach women at local levels, I argue that gender mainstreaming requires international collaboration by gender specialists to facilitate greater attention to gender assessments by national bodies. It also requires national coalitions of gender expert units, women's organisations and academics to work together to expose culturally specific gendered issues and discriminatory outcomes.

Droughts and drought mitigation in water resources planning

Many parts of Australia have experienced their worst single- and multi-year droughts on record over the last decade. These recent climate conditions have severely stressed our water supply systems and the communities that depend on them. With the threat of climate change potentially further exacerbating droughts in the years ahead, Engineers Australia firmly believes that: (i) A national review of the adequacy of drought response plans is urgently required. A recent national overview of long-term water resources planning by the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE, 2007) revealed large inconsistencies and inadequacies in the standard of that planning. Based on the knowledge of the authors of this paper, similar outcomes are expected in the area of drought response planning. The scope of the review should include assessment of the transparency and defensibility of the timing of implementation of drought response actions; (ii) Continuing investment is needed in climate research to better understand the underlying drivers of our climate variability and their interactions at a range of time scales. The majority of research to date has focused on short-term sea surface temperature or pressure differentials across the globe (eg. the El Niño/Southern Oscillation) without understanding the longer-term drivers behind these temperature and pressure responses, which are being investigated through the Indian Ocean Climate Initiative and, more recently, the South East Australia Climate Initiative. This investment should include consolidation for and communication to the water industry of existing knowledge of links between long-term climate variability and key climate drivers including Earth’s orbital cycles, solar activity, atmospheric chemistry, major volcanic eruptions, surface and deeper ocean circulations (including the thermohaline circulation – the “great ocean conveyor belt”), sea ice, and major bushfires; (iii) Greater collaboration is required between climatologists, paleoclimatologists and water resource engineers to take advantage of recent scientific advances that have direct implications for drought response planning. Engineers Australia proposes that the National Water Commission should conduct a national forum to bring these three industry groups together with the aim of providing meaningful, useful advice to water industry practitioners from the latest climate research and to guide research activities towards more practical outcomes. This will enable water resource planners to better understand natural climate variability in the longer term and appropriately take into account greenhouse gas induced climate change, including an understanding of uncertainties surrounding both current and future climate; (iv) The development of an industry standard end-use demand model for urban areas should be accelerated. The absence of an industry standard tool in this area currently inhibits the ability to rapidly assess the financial costs of imposing restrictions on particular sectors of the community versus supply augmentation costs to avoid those restrictions. Such a tool is needed to make informed decisions about preparedness to pay for new infrastructure to avoid or reduce restrictions; and (v) More sophisticated water products and market mechanisms have a strong role to play in better managing scarce resources between similar types of users during times of drought. This has become increasingly important with demand hardening over recent decades, which has reduced the water savings that are achievable from water restrictions. Any expansion of water markets as a drought management tool must, however, occur within a regulatory framework that seeks to achieve equitable social outcomes by acknowledging the inherent social value of water to communities and the food security value of water to the nation. It is acknowledged in preparing this position paper that our understanding of drought and our responses to it are rapidly changing, particularly in light of climate change. This is particularly the case with the current reviews of aspects of the National Drought Policy, which were being undertaken by several government agencies at the time of drafting this paper. It is hoped that this position paper will encourage both greater dialogue and investment in drought forecasting, planning, adaptation and mitigation to enable Australia to be well placed to cope with future climate conditions.

Using adaptive governance to rethink the way science supports Australian drought policy

In this paper we show how ideas from a longstanding but little recognised literature on adaptive governance can be used to rethink the way science supports Australian drought policy. We compare and contrast alternative ways of using science to support policy in order to critique traditional commentary on Australian drought policy. We find that criticism from narrow disciplinary and institutional perspectives has provided few practical options for policy makers managing these complex and interacting goals. In contrast, ideas from a longstanding but little recognised literature on adaptive governance have potential to create innovative policy options for addressing the multiple interacting goals of Australian drought policy. From an adaptive governance perspective, the deep concern held by Australian society for rural communities affected by drought can be viewed as a common property resource that can be sustainably managed by governments in cooperation with rural communities. Managing drought assistance as a common property resource can be facilitated through nested and polycentric systems of governance similar to those that have already evolved in other arenas of natural resource management in Australia, such as Landcare groups and Catchment Management Authorities. Essential to delivering these options is the creation of flexible, regionally distributed scientific support for drought policy capable of integrating local knowledge and informing the livelihood outcomes of critical importance to governments and rural communities.

Squeaky Wheel Gets the Oil: Incentives, Information and Drought Policy

AbstractMost economic assessments conclude there is no economic efficiency case for governments to provide drought assistance. However, significant public funds are allocated to farmers during droughts and there is a second‐best case to improve drought policy design. In this article we show that the National Drought Policy suffers from adverse selection, moral hazard, incentive compatibility and government commitment problems. We use ABARE farm‐level data that suggest that at least adverse selection was a problem in Victoria during the 2002‐03 drought. These results are replicated at the national level. The current approach of the Commonwealth and state governments is ineffective because it is very difficult to design an efficient and fair drought policy that relies on ex post revelation of information. An alternative approach is investigated where incentives are designed so that farmers self‐select into one of a number of drought policy agreements consistent with their capacity to prepare for drought.

From rainfall to farm incomes—transforming advice for Australian drought policy. II. Forecasting farm incomes

Australian drought policy is focussed on providing relief from the immediate effects of drought on farm incomes, while enhancing the longer term resilience of rural livelihoods. Despite the socioeconomic nature of these objectives, the information systems created to support the policy have focussed almost exclusively on biophysical measures of climate variability and its effects on agricultural production. In this paper, we demonstrate the ability of bioeconomic modelling to overcome the moral hazard and timing issues that have led to the dominance of these biophysical measures. The Agricultural Farm Income Risk Model (AgFIRM), developed and tested in a companion paper, is used to provide objective, model-based forecasts of annual farm incomes at the beginning of the financial year (July–June). The model was then used to relate climate-induced income variability to the diversity of farm income sources, a practical measure of adaptive capacity that can be positively influenced by policy. Three timeless philosophical arguments are used to discuss the policy relevance of the bioeconomic modelling. These arguments are used to compare the value to decision makers of relatively imprecise, integrative information, with relatively precise, reductionist measures. We conclude that the evolution of bioeconomic modelling systems provides an opportunity to refocus the analytical support for Australian drought policy towards the rural livelihood effects that matter most to governments and rural communities.

From rainfall to farm incomes—transforming advice for Australian drought policy. I. Development and testing of a bioeconomic modelling system

In this paper we report the development of a bioeconomic modelling system, AgFIRM, designed to help close a relevance gap between climate science and policy in Australia. We do this by making a simple econometric farm income model responsive to seasonal forecasts of crop and pasture growth for the coming season. The key quantitative innovation was the use of multiple and M-quantile regression to calibrate the farm income model, using simulated crop and pasture growth from 2 agroecological models. The results of model testing demonstrated a capability to reliably forecast the direction of movement in Australian farm incomes in July at the beginning of the financial year (July–June). The structure of the model, and the seasonal climate forecasting system used, meant that its predictive accuracy was greatest across Australia’s cropping regions. In a second paper, Nelson et al. (2007, this issue), we have demonstrated how the bioeconomic modelling system developed here could be used to enhance the value of climate science to Australian drought policy.