“Drought is a silent killer. It creeps in, drains resources and devastates lives in slow motion,” said Ibrahim Thiaw, executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. “Its scars run deep.”
A comprehensive new report released this week documents what experts call some of the most widespread and damaging droughts in recorded history, affecting millions of people across Africa, the Mediterranean, Latin America and Southeast Asia between 2023 and 2025.
The report prepared by the US National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification describes how severe droughts have led to poverty, hunger, energy insecurity and ecosystem collapse worldwide.
The report draws on more than 250 peer-reviewed studies, official data sources and news reports across more than a dozen countries and regions.
“This is not a dry spell,” Mark Svoboda, report co-author and NDMC director said in a statement. “This is a slow-moving global catastrophe, the worst I’ve ever seen. This report underscores the need for systematic monitoring of how drought affects lives, livelihoods, and the health of the ecosystems that we all depend on.”
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Every dollar invested in nature-based solutions not only reduces drought impacts, but can generate benefits of up to US$27 – including higher farmer incomes, value chain resilience and reduced long-term economic costs.
Niels Annen, parliamentary secretary for the ministry for economic cooperation and development, Germany
More than 90 million people across Eastern and Southern Africa face acute food insecurity or need food assistance, according to the report. In Somalia alone, the government estimated 43,000 people may have died in 2022 due to drought. As of early 2025, 4.4 million Somalis, a quarter of the population, face crisis-level food insecurity.
Zimbabwe’s 2024 corn crop was down 70 per cent compared with the previous year, while maize prices doubled and 9,000 cattle died of thirst and starvation.
In Zambia, one of the world’s worst energy crises unfolded as the Zambezi River plummeted to 20 per cent of its long-term average, causing the Kariba Dam to drop to just 7 per cent of its generation capacity and triggering power outages of up to 21 hours per day.
“Drought is no longer a distant threat. It is here, escalating, and demands urgent global cooperation,” Thiaw said. “When energy, food and water all go at once, societies start to unravel. That’s the new normal we need to be ready for.”
According to the report, a combination of climate change and the 2023-24 El Niño event has made the global drought crisis worse, amplifying already harsh conditions across the world.
“This was a perfect storm,” said Kelly Helm Smith, NDMC assistant director and report co-author. “El Niño added fuel to the fire of climate change, compounding the effects for many vulnerable societies and ecosystems past their limits.”
The Mediterranean region, identified as a climate change hotspot, experienced severe water shortages and agricultural failures. Spain’s olive crop dropped 50 per cent due to two years of drought and record heat, causing olive oil prices to double. Morocco’s sheep population declined by 38 per cent compared with 2016, prompting a royal plea to cancel traditional Eid sacrifices.
“The struggles experienced by Spain, Morocco and Türkiye to secure water, food, and energy under persistent drought offer a preview of water futures under unchecked global warming. No country, regardless of wealth or capacity, can afford to be complacent,” Svoboda said.
In the Amazon Basin, record-low river levels led to mass deaths of fish and endangered dolphins, while disrupting drinking water and transport for hundreds of thousands of people. More than 200 endangered river dolphins died in September 2023 due to excessively warm water temperatures.
The drought risks are pushing the Amazon from a carbon sink to a carbon source, with potentially global consequences for climate change.
In Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, at least 100 elephants died from starvation and limited access to water between August and December 2023. Entire herds of hippos became stranded in dried-up riverbeds in Botswana, while some countries resorted to culling wild animals (including 200 elephants in Zimbabwe and Namibia) to feed rural communities facing starvation.
The report also highlights the disproportionate impacts on vulnerable human populations. In Zimbabwe, entire school districts saw mass dropouts due to hunger, costs and sanitation issues for girls. In Eastern Africa, forced child marriages more than doubled as families sought dowries to survive.
“The coping mechanisms we saw during this drought grew increasingly desperate,” said lead author Paula Guastello, NDMC drought impacts researcher. “Girls pulled from school and forced into marriage, hospitals going dark and families digging holes in dry riverbeds just to find contaminated water — these are signs of severe crisis.”
According to the International Labour Organization women carry out more than 75 per cent of unpaid care work globally, which is 3.2 times more than men, and this burden increases during climate disasters.
Recent estimates from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show that a drought episode today costs at least twice as much economically as it did in 2000, with costs expected to rise by another 35 per cent to 110 per cent by 2035.
Drought costs are rising because climate change is making droughts more frequent and severe, while our economy has become more vulnerable to water shortages.
The report calls for urgent investments in drought preparedness, including stronger early warning systems, watershed restoration, better infrastructure including off-grid energy and an emphasis on gender equality.
“Proactive drought management is an ecological and societal imperative. It is also a significant economic opportunity,” German parliamentary secretary for the ministry for economic cooperation and development, Niels Annen said in a statement. He added that preventing droughts has a high return on investment. “Every dollar invested in nature-based solutions not only reduces drought impacts, but can generate benefits of up to US$27 – including higher farmer incomes, value chain resilience, and reduced long-term economic costs.”
“The nations of the world have the resources and the knowledge to prevent a lot of suffering,” Smith said. “The question is, do we have the will?”
This story was published with permission from Mongabay.com.
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