Drought Risk Management in South and South-East Asia

The geo-climatic conditions of South and South-East Asian countries are diverse and vulnerable to multiple natural hazards such as drought. Drought evolves over months or even years, affects a large spatial extent and causes enormous damages. Drought Risk Management in South and South-East Asia is a comprehensive reference on overall perspectives and scenarios on drought risk mitigation and management, based on researches and case studies from South and South-East Asian countries. Drought management is a complex area of work that requires active and continuous participation of the national, provincial and local governments, multiple ministries, and divisions. This book demonstrates the best practices of socio-economic and technological interventions to enhance drought risk management, which will help to develop plans and policies, and their implementation to reduce the impact of droughts. It also offers views of field practitioners on impacts of the interventions practised at the national, sub-national and local levels.

Indrajit Pal, PhD, is Assistant Professor and Chair in the Disaster Preparedness, Mitigation and Management, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. He has served as a faculty member at the Centre for Disaster Management at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, India (a Premier National Institute for training Indian Administrative Services Officers). Dr Pal holds a doctoral and two master’s degrees in applied geology and sociology, with specialization in urban sociology. Dr Pal has more than 16 years of experience in research, teaching, training, advocacy, consultancy, primarily focused on disaster governance, risk management, incident command system, disaster risk reduction, hazard and risk assessment, risk perceptions, participatory disaster research management (DRM), public health risk, geographic information system (GIS) & remote sensing in DRM, climate change adaptation and disaster risk management. Dr Pal is currently supervising Doctoral and Masters’ research students across Asia and Africa in the field of disaster risk management and governance. He is a reviewer of more than 12 international journals and has published a number of books and research articles in referred national and international journals. He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Global Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes (GADRI), Japan.

Mihir R. Bhatt, PhD, is the director of the All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI). He works on reducing risk-related action and learning and is involved with Experience Learning Series on Learning and Risk Mitigation; Southasiadisasters.net; Afat Nivaran (a Gujarati Newsletter) and Vipada Nivaran (a Hindi Newsletter). His writings have been published widely on issues of vulnerability and disasters, and have been part of key evaluations of disaster response in Asia. He is a Senior Fellow of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative since 2007 and was a member of the panel that selects the Humanitarian Coordinators for the United Nations. He has an advisory role in the Climate Development Knowledge Network’s work on climate compatible development in nine states of India with focus on urban resilience, green finance, and renewable energy at subnational level. He was recently invited to join the independent panel of INGO Accountability Charter to review accountability of international civil society.

He chairs Duryog Nivaran, a South Asian network on alternative thinking on disaster risk reduction. He has recently published chapters titled “The Interplay of Women, Work and Disasters: Missing Women’s View” and “Gender, Disasters and Development: Opportunities for South-South Cooperation” in a book named Women and Disasters in South Asia: Survival, Security and Development. He has also published a chapter titled “Using Disaster Insurance to Build Urban Resilience: Lessons from Micro-enterprise” in a book called Urban Disaster Resilience: New Dimensions from International Practice in the Built Environment.