Building and expanding on its relationships with agencies and organizations that build drought resilience, the National Drought Mitigation Center in July announced agreements to extend existing projects and create new ones.
“These projects all advance the mission of the National Drought Mitigation Center, which is to build resilience to drought on local, tribal, state, national and global levels,” NDMC director Mark Svoboda said. “We are always open to partnerships with groups that want to join us in that mission.”
The center is based at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Projects include:
- A three-year $4.5 million extension of the partnership with the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) to continue developing drought resilience projects in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA). NDMC and the Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute (DWFI) will continue to partner with IWMI to lead a research effort to enhance the drought preparedness capabilities of Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia.
The NDMC, IWMI and DWFI will collaborate with other international and regional partners and continue to deliver enhanced drought monitoring, seasonal forecasting, drought impact and vulnerability mapping, drought preparedness planning and resilience-building tools to the MENA region.
The project goal is to assist the four countries in building self-reliant capabilities to deal with the effects of droughts, and to assist vulnerable and marginalized communities in an effort to reduce suffering, limit loss of livelihoods and support a quicker return to more normal conditions in times of drought.
The new joint partnership MENA project with IWMI, NDMC and DWFI totals $4.5 million over three years. Earlier this year, the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) provided $478,000 in additional funding toward the MENA Regional Drought Management System project. - A two-year, $1.6 million extension of NDMC’s partnership with the NIDIS on the Drought Risk Management Research Center. The Center, created in partnership with NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System, focuses on research to improve drought monitoring, impacts assessment and risk management. The DRMRC works closely with NIDIS and federal, state, tribal and local partners to help them prepare for drought and mitigate its effects. The center was launched with an initial three-year, $2.4-million grant.
The development of a partnership with the World Bank to improve drought preparedness in Botswana and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). In June, officials from both Botswana and Eswatini visited Lincoln to tour the NDMC headquarters, share information about how drought affects their homes and learn about tools that have been developed by NDMC that could be used to analyze drought conditions there and improve preparedness and response. The goal, several officials said, is to advance past responding to droughts in crisis modes.
More details at: http://drought.unl.edu