Drought: Impacts, Prevention, and Adaptation Options Across Scales

Beyond lack of water, drought means that expected levels of water availability are not realized, triggering cascading consequences across land, water, biodiversity, climate, and human systems. Drought reflects variation in water availability, including thresholds, frequency, intensity, duration, and spatial synchrony as well as how expectations and anticipation shape human actions. Drought symptoms are linked to local pressures and broader drivers of change and can induce social and ecological responses. This review synthesizes advances in understanding the biophysical and socioeconomic impacts of drought across temporal scales, from seasonal to multi-year and climatic drought, and across subsystem typologies, including meteorological, hydrological, agricultural, ecological, and socioeconomic drought. The review demonstrates how weakened ecological buffers, governance failures, and policy incoherence intensify drought vulnerability. Building drought resilience requires coordinated action across sectors, scales, and institutions to restore the ecological, social, and governance buffers that sustain human well-being and planetary stability.

Updated August 19th, 2026