Australia’s drought planning should begin now, not when the rain dries up

The effects of global heating mean there is less time between drought and flood to recover from these extremes. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

It is a truth universally acknowledged that we rarely talk about drought when we are not in drought. You could loosely call it the “hydro-illogical cycle”.

For a dry continent such as ours, how we manage rain and its deficit is a big piece of both agricultural and environmental policy.