Investing in Drought Preparedness

Disasters are a combination of natural factors (hazards)
and human factors (vulnerabilities and coping capacity).
Disaster risk reduction (DRR) programmes aim at
increasing the coping capacities of the affected
communities and reducing their vulnerability.
In developing countries, the Commission's action
focuses on supporting strategies and complementing
existing strategies that enable local communities and
institutions to better prepare for, mitigate and respond
adequately to natural disasters by enhancing their
capacities to cope and respond, thereby increasing
resilience and reducing vulnerability. This support is a
combination of community-based projects and projects at
national or regional level that strive to increase resilience
in the event of natural hazards. Community-based
projects can be taken as an example to be scaled up by
authorities and other communities.
In the Horn of Africa, drought is a recurrent hazard that
affects a large percentage of the population. The
frequency and intensity of drought disasters have
increased over the last decades, threatening to wipe
away the developmental gains that have been made.
The European Commission established DRR
programmes in the Horn of Africa in 2006, with a specific
focus on drought. These projects seek to build resilience
in communities that are particularly vulnerable to
drought, so they can cope better when rains fail.
In the past, communities had traditional coping
mechanisms, such as migration in search of resources,
for dealing with recurrent drought.
Today, population growth, resource-based conflict, lack
of development, poor basic services, a trend towards a
more sedentary lifestyle, as well as climate change make
it harder to implement traditional coping strategies. So
far, the Commission has invested €70 million in such
programmes and the results are beginning to show.