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Multiple droughts around the world today threaten significant political, social and economic impacts. Drought in Iran has forced internal migration and sparked protests. Parts of Brazil are experiencing the worst drought in decades, affecting its agricultural production and creating risks for the population, including in large cities. A historic drought in California is leading to water restrictions, damaging agriculture and increasing the risk of wildfires. Drought in places such as Yemen, southern Africa, North Korea and other parts of the world will also have long-term effects. Climate change will intensify the severity and duration of future droughts.
Drought is a part of human history. While humans can often adapt to short-term droughts, severe and long-lasting ones tend to result in upheaval. Severe or unexpected droughts played a role in reshaping ancient civilizations, such as the Maya, ancient Egypt, Rome and the Khmer Empire.
While the most dramatic examples of drought contributing to the collapse of civilizations come from ancient history, there are many more modern examples of drought playing a major role in societal change. Drought often interacts with human activities around population settlement, agriculture and water management to produce disasters.
Drought has played a major role in Chinese history for centuries. In more recent times, drought combined with warfare to cause severe famine in northern China in 1928 to 1930. While drought killed crops, warfare also played a major role, including diverting resources to soldiers and forcing some farmers to plant opium as a cash crop rather than food. The famine killed at least 3 million people and forced millions more to migrate.
The Dust Bowl in the southern plains of the US is one of the most famous modern drought stories. Government and business policies had encouraged farmers to settle in the area, where they plowed up prairie grasses to plant crops. The Great Depression hit in 1929 and wheat prices crashed in 1930. After drought began the same year, the already struggling farmers watched their crops die. Without prairie grasses to hold down the soil, huge amounts blew away. As the value of farms collapsed, destitute families left in huge numbers — about 2.5 million people, many of them moving west. The extreme amounts of dust in the air directly caused illness and death. The region was never the same and the farmers’ stories became a part of American culture.
Drought in part of India that began in 1965 led to food shortages that contributed to famine and migration. Huge amounts of foreign food aid, particularly from the US, prevented more widespread starvation but also highlighted the need for India to be more food independent, which prompted a change in agricultural strategy. However, drought continues to pose challenges for India; for example, in 2012, drought contributed to a drop in hydroelectric supply that, combined with a jump in demand, resulted in mass blackouts.
Ethiopia faces regular challenges from drought and the country became the scene of one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the second half of the 20th century. In the 1980s, recurring drought, combined with war and political policies, caused a famine, killing about 1 million people, according to the UN. Millions more were displaced, some in search of food and others forcibly displaced by the military, leading to further deaths. The extreme suffering attracted global attention and led to a massive aid effort. Aid agencies learned important lessons from the experience, which led to the expansion of aid capacity and reforms in humanitarian policies.
While humans can often adapt to short-term droughts, severe and long-lasting ones tend to result in upheaval.
Kerry Boyd Anderson
In Syria, an extremely severe drought from 2006 through 2011 led to crop failures and forced more than 1.5 million people to migrate from rural areas to cities. In addition to damaging the country’s gross domestic product, the economic impacts on individuals and the overcrowding of urban areas exacerbated political and social tensions — very likely contributing to the Syrian civil war, which in turn displaced many more Syrians.
The circumstances behind all of these disasters were specific to their particular places and times, but their stories highlight some patterns and offer lessons. Drought alone poses challenges, but it is especially deadly when it occurs at the same time as warfare or weak governance. Drought can exacerbate divisions and desperation in a society, thus contributing to extremism (as seen in places such as Iraq and Mali) and war (as in Syria). Severe drought very often leads to migration as people search for food and arable land or jobs. Drought can destroy agriculture and other resources, such as fishing, and contribute to local and even global increases in food prices.
Disasters stemming from extreme drought can also lead to positive change. Particularly in countries with functioning governments, societies can apply lessons and improve agricultural and water management policies. Drought sometimes spurs innovation, such as drought-resistant seeds, improved distribution infrastructure, water-saving forms of irrigation, diversification of crops and reduced reliance on imports, advanced understanding of ecology and changing environmental conditions, and efforts to preserve fertile soil.
As climate change intensifies drought, governments, farmers and societal leaders can study lessons from the past to identify future risks and ways to more effectively respond.
- Kerry Boyd Anderson is a writer and political risk consultant with more than 18 years of experience as a professional analyst of international security issues and Middle East political and business risk. Her previous positions include deputy director for advisory with Oxford Analytica. Twitter: @KBAresearch