Strengthening Thailand's Agricultural drought Resilience

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Droughts impact lives and livelihoods around the world, particularly in those regions with limited resilience to extreme events. In South-East Asia (SEA), pressures from climate and land use change, increasing populations and development impact water resources, even in Thailand which is considered to be one of the wealthier countries in the region. A number of recent drought events in Thailand have impacted food supplies, energy production and the wider economy, underlining the vulnerability of the country. The agricultural sector is particularly affected by water shortages and a better understanding of drought in Thailand would underpin mitigation actions that improve resilience and livelihoods.Drought monitoring can improve preparedness and management, and whilst drought information provided through existing operational services provides a useful tool for water managers, there is limited understanding of how these indices relate to impacts. This appreciation of the links between drought indicators and impacts is limited by the availability of both consistent hydrometeorological datasets and impacts data collected from agricultural stakeholders. An improved understanding of this indicator-impact link would enhance the management and communication of drought, increase resilience and reduce vulnerability.The STAR project will address these research needs through the following objectives: 1) engage stakeholders in informing and co-designing drought monitoring practices, ensuring collaboration during and post project; 2) develop new drought monitoring and characterisation indicators for Thailand based on stakeholders' needs; 3) improve understanding of drought impacts on agriculture and assess adaptive capacity in a case study catchment; 4) increase drought resilience and capacity through better communication of drought risks and associated impacts.STAR aims to enhance resilience to drought for all of Thailand although some activities will take place within a catchment-based context. The Ping catchment is a major tributary of the strategically important Chao Phraya river, identified for its importance within the agricultural sector and vulnerability to drought. Approaches are likely to be scalable within Thailand and the SEA region more generally. The project is structured in four Work packages (WPs), with stakeholder engagement embedded in each of them: WP1 will identify those principally responsible for drought management and communication. The PingSTAR Network, a collaboration of diverse stakeholders within the Ping catchment, will be initiated and run through the duration of the project and beyond. WP2 will assess the drought hazard in Thailand, utilising and co-developing a range of hydrometeorological indicator datasets for drought identification and characterisation, a major legacy of STAR that will be disseminated as per the Pwthways to Impact. WP3 will work within the Ping catchment to better understand and quantify the agricultural and socioeconomic impacts of drought. Through a combination of social network analysis, collating existing sources and undertaking interviews in the field with farmers, a rich record of impacts will be databased and analysed. Finally, WP4 will bridge the national and catchment scales, establishing the relationship between drought indicators and impacts through a case study in the Ping catchment before assessing the scalability of such approaches more widely in Thailand and South-East Asia. Visualisation tools will be developed to allow stakeholders to better understand the link between drought indicators and impacts, and a capacity-building, knowledge-sharing workshop with national and regional stakeholders will consolidate the research outcomes of the STAR project and consider how the developed approaches could be applied more widely for enhanced drought resilience.