Drought and agroecology

Drought is recognised by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification as ‘the most complex and serious of meteorological disasters’. It is a phenomenon that affects every region of the world, and policies to anticipate, adapt to and mitigate its effects are struggling to be put in place.

CARI is working to understand how the agroecological transition can help to make regions more resilient to the hazards of drought. This summary is based on an analysis of the effects of agroecology, pooling the results of evaluations carried out using FAO tools (TAPE), the AVACLIM project and the Agroecological Transitions Working Group (GTAE).

The summary highlights that :

• Adopting agroecological principles over the long term can have a positive effect on reducing sensitivity to drought.
• Agroecological intensification makes it possible to work on the resilience, self-reorganisation and adaptation capacities of farms, enabling them to be more resilient in the face of drought hazards.

Given that exposure to drought is inevitable and unpredictable, the summary shows that the agroecological transition is a promising way of reducing the vulnerability of farming systems.

This summary is taken from the master thesis by Baptiste de Crespin de Billy, who was intern at CARI from February to August 2023. The original title of the thesis is « Agroecology to Reduce Drought Risk for Agricultural Systems in the Saharan Rim Region: Insights from Grey Literature provided by Three Agroecology Assessment Tools».