This document discusses research needs and vision for an integrated drought management programme in Central and Eastern Europe. It outlines several key points: 1. Climate change is projected to increase the frequency and severity of droughts globally, causing billions in losses annually. Many parts of the world are seeing long-term drying trends. 2. Future research should focus on drought as a natural hazard, impacts, and policy responses including developing drought management plans. Better communication of climate information to decision-makers is also needed. 3. Specific research needs include improving drought predictability, understanding impacts on environment and socioeconomics, and developing tools to assess and communicate drought risks under climate change. Maintaining cooperation and collaboration frameworks between research and

1. Integrated Drought Management
Research needs and vision for
follow-up programme
Lučka Kajfež Bogataj
4th Workshop
Integrated Drought Management Programme in Central and Eastern Europe
Bucharest 21 & 22 April 2015

2. Introduction facts
• World Economic Forum: drought across the
globe costs 6 to 8 billion dollars a year from
losses in agriculture and related businesses.
• Very dry areas across the globe have doubled
in extent since the 1970s. A long-term drying
trend persists in Africa, East and South Asia,
eastern Australia, southern Europe, Brasil etc.
• Further climate change will make things even
worse.

4. Projected changes in the length of dry spell (in days) from 1971-2000 to 2071–2100
for the RCP8.5 scenario based on the ensemble mean of different regional climate
models nested in different general circulation models

5. Projected changes in annual (left) and summer (right) precipitation (%) in
the period 2071-2100 compared to the baseline period 1971-2000 for the
forcing scenario RCP 8.5. Model simulations are based on the multi-model
ensemble average of RCM simulations from the EURO-CORDEX initiative.

6. Change of mean annual streamflow for a global mean
temperature rise of 2°C above 1980–2010 (IPCC, 2014)

7. Climate change impact (= drought impact) on wheat yield

8. Adaptation
processes
needed
Integrated
Drought
Management
Research

9. General water research questions
related to drought in Europe today
1. Maintaining ecosystem (including
agroecosystem) sustainability
2. Developing safe water systems for the citizens
3. Promoting competitiveness in the water industry
4. Implementing a water-wise bio-based economy

10. Water in EU research programs

11. Call – Water Innovation
Boosting its value for Europe

12. Are 4 key principles (WMO/GWP,
2011) stil valide?
• Shift the focus from reactive to proactive and
programmatic measures through mitigation, vulnerability
reduction and preparedness;
• Integrate vertical planning and decision making processes
at regional, national and community levels into a
framework of horizontally integrated sectors and disciplines
(such as water, agriculture, ecosystems and energy);
• Promote the evolution of a knowledge base and establish
mechanisms for sharing it with stakeholders across sectors
at all levels
• Build capacity of various stakeholders at different levels.

13. What problems we want to solve?
• Lack of a national and regional drought policy framework;
• lack of coordination between institutions that provide different
types of drought products
• lack of social indicators to form part of a comprehensive early
warning system;
• lack of efforts in strengthening, testing and evaluating EWS
across spatial and temporal scales
• Quality of information available to decision-makers at all levels;
• To know factors that influence whether or not information will
be used
• Limited governance structures that facilitate better decision
making practice including adapting the decision-support systems
to the different levels of decision makers.

14. Future research - 3 directions:
• Drought as a natural hazard, including climate
change drivers, drought processes and
occurrences;
• Environmental and socio-economic impacts; and
• Vulnerabilities, risks and policy responses,
including the further development of drought
management plans in support of European and
other international policies
+ BETTER COMUNICATION

15. Provide reliable climatic forecasts
– Drought predictability: subseasonal /
seasonal/decadal / climatic
– Drought characteristics are still not well known
• Sporadic nature of extremes
• Limited availability of long time observation series.
– Increased global reanalyses: research on past extreme
events.
– Improve climate models to assess likelihood and
magnitudes of extreme events under climate change.
– Provide more user‐oriented measures of extreme
events

16. Drought and climate change
– Improving tools for drought decision‐making
under climate change
• Categorising and communicating risks and uncertainties
• Integrating global climate change analysis and
assessment
• Nesting scenarios at different levels
• Linking scenarios and decision tools

17. Drought cooperation and communication
are needed more than ever
– Promote and develop panEuropean:
• Drought-oriented climate modelling collaboration environment
• collaboration environment for long‐term drought monitoring and
analysis
– Communication of drought climate knowledge to
end‐users:
• Understanding user needs
– Identifying‘drought sensitivities’ associated with decision‐makers
activities
– Tools/methods to communicate climatic information on drought
– Communication of uncertainties too!
• Interfacing drought climate research and its application
– Improving the interface between climate and drought impacts research

18. Research needs on drought impacts:
• Environmental impacts (Effect on habitats and
protected natural areas, preventing
production of ecosystem services )
• Drought effects on water quality for
environmental uses (Urban, industrial and
agricultural water pollution, particular
attention to emerging pollutants)

19. In the context of climate change, meeting
critical emergent needs require that:
• Drought should be seen as risks to investments in “capitals”
including human capital (Money talks lauder...).
• Faster rates of climate change drive surprises and rapid
transitions in which early warnings will be increasingly
critical;
• there is the ongoing need to take on the institutional
aspects of “capacity” and “coordination” at national and
local levels much more directly than is being done.
Sustained collaborative framework among research,
monitoring and decision-making/management is needed
• Development, support, and training of professionals and
policy entrepreneurs who view the role of linking science,
policy and practices as a core goal over the long term.