Today, the world’s dry areas face new challenges, mainly high rates of population growth that stress the environment and strain the capacity of the natural resource base to support them. The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that the earth’s average surface temperature will rise by 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius over the next 100 years. This will result in severe water stress in the arid and semi-arid areas and in decreased agricultural production, particularly in the dry areas, which will become drier and hotter. There is an urgent need for action to mitigate the effects of drought on people, agriculture and the environment, as well as to find ways to cope with it when it comes.
     ICARDA, as its name indicates, is the principal international research center dedicated to dryland agriculture. The Center works in close partnership with national agricultural research systems to develop technologies and sound management practices that help farming communities to cope with drought, as well as understand the causes that lead to its occurrence.
     This issue of Caravan presents the facts about drought, including efforts to more accurately predict its occurrence and severity. Agroclimatologists, for example, are making use of satellite imagery and geographical information systems in their research on combating drought and desertification. Plant breeders, on the other hand, are combining the traditional methods of crossing and selection with the use of biotechnology tools to develop more drought-tolerant crop varieties.
     Water-use efficiency is an obvious goal of anyone working in dryland agriculture. We must recognize that water, not land, is the principal factor limiting production, and production systems must be adjusted accordingly. This shift in approach has spawned research into supplementary irrigation and deficit irrigation. The former involves irrigating to maximize production per unit of water; the latter, giving a crop just enough water to produce a satisfactory crop. The water saved can be used to cultivate new land.
     ICARDA’s research also recognizes the value of local knowledge. After all, it were farmers who first domesticated crops and who, over the ages, have selected useful traits. A good example of farmer-researcher partnership is the work of ICARDA’s barley breeders, who have thoroughly adopted the farmer participatory approach to breeding. Farmers are supplied seeds of potentially useful barley lines and asked to grow them and select the best plants, right on their own farms. The process is more complex than traditional research-station-based breeding, but the result is barley lines that better match farmers’ needs and better suit farm conditions.
     With more and more countries projected to face increasing water shortages in the coming decades, the need for research and development into drought forecasting and preparedness to protect the productivity of dryland agriculture is obvious. And with water rights so tied to tradition and cross-border relations, all progress on the technological front must move hand-in-hand with progress made on the domestic and international policy front.
     Drought is inevitable. But if researchers, farmers, and governments work together, the destruction and suffering that it brings can be reduced and even avoided.