“Girls pulled from school and forced into marriage, hospitals going dark, and families digging holes in dry riverbeds just to find contaminated water - these are signs of severe crisis," says Paula Guastello, drought impacts researcher at the US National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC).
Together with the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the US centre has just finished surveying global droughts between 2023 to 2025. They found that some of the most widespread and damaging droughts in recorded history have hit during the last two years.
