Do global risk assessments leave countries behind? How the selection of countries influences outcomes of drought risk assessments

This paper intends to show the effect of changing the selection of countries included in a drought risk assessment on its outcomes and highlight the countries that are “left behind” by a global drought risk assessment. Global drought risk assessments have been conducted with the objective of highlighting the regions or countries most at risk, and their outcomes are deemed useful to inform decisions on the implementation of risk reduction, transfer, financing, and adaptation strategies.

The findings of this paper highlight the importance of analysing risk at multiple spatial scales to ensure no country is “left behind” in global risk and adaptation finance decisions.  By comparing the results of the global drought risk assessment and the cluster risk assessments, this analysis illustrated that hazard/exposure, vulnerability, and risk indexes are impacted by the selection of countries included in the analysis. Further, comparing the categorisation of drought risk between the global and cluster assessments has revealed that some countries that do experience the negative impacts of drought and are highlighted as having “high” or “very high” risk at the cluster scale, are overshadowed in a global assessment.