Ready for the dry years: Building resilience to drought in South-East Asia with a focus on Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar and Viet Nam: 2020 update

South-East Asia is regularly hit by droughts. Ready for the Dry Years offers a clear analysis of this subject, assessing prospects for the decades ahead and highlighting the principal risks. Though starting slowly, droughts can have devastating cumulative impacts – striking hardest at the poor and heightening inequality, as well as degrading land and increasing the prospects of conflict. The report shows that there will be many more dry years ahead, and the area affected by drought is likely to shift and expand.

This report identifies actions that ASEAN member States can individually and collectively undertake to mitigate the impacts of drought. Many timely steps taken now, to strengthen risk assessments and forecasting, develop risk financing markets, and enhance people’s adaptive capacity, can contribute towards protecting the poorest communities and fostering more peaceful societies.

Based on the findings of this study and the existing frameworks, the following interventions are proposed for implementation by ESCAP and ASEAN:

• Strengthen drought risk assessment and early warning services
• Foster drought risk financing markets
• Reduce conflict by enhancing the adaptive capacity to drought