Droughts, floods and food systems risk dialogue – Part II: What do droughts really cost? Understanding impacts and losses on the economy, global food systems and wellbeing

Time

15:00 - 16:00 CET

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Food systems are at the core of economic livelihoods across the globe. The success or failure of a harvest impacts how families spend their income, who can afford a healthy diet, who learns and thrives in school, and who is left behind.

Major staple crops like wheat, maize, rice and soybean are already exposed to significant drought losses, and those losses are likely to increase as global temperatures rise. New global drought and crop loss modelling undertaken for the GAR 2026 Special Report examines average annual drought losses, and losses in a larger one-in-fifty-year event under current climate conditions and in a 2°C or 3°C warmer world.

The direct physical impacts of drought—flood cycles are just one part of the picture. When droughts and floods devastate harvests, the impacts spread from farms into food prices and household incomes, schools, health systems and inequality. Droughts also disrupt industrial processes that depend on water, resulting in increased production costs for critical sectors such as transport, energy, manufacturing and mining, all of which support the food value chain, from farm to table.

In Part II of the Risk Dialogue Series on “Droughts, Floods and Food Systems”, experts and participants explore the costs of drought across agricultural production, economies and societies. The dialogue presents the new global drought and crop-loss modelling developed for the GAR 2026 and examines how agricultural shocks can affect food markets, prices, livelihoods and wellbeing.

Other dialogues in this series

• Part I: When El Niño meets global warming: The rise of compound drought extremes (includes video recording)