Driven by climate change and mounting pressure on land and water resources, some of the most extensive and destructive droughts in recorded history have occurred since 2023, according to a new UN-supported report.
Produced by the U.S. National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), with backing from the International Drought Resilience Alliance (IDRA), the report — Drought Hotspots Around the World 2023–2025 — offers a sweeping analysis of how drought fuels poverty, hunger, energy shortages, and ecological breakdown.
“Drought is a silent killer. It creeps in, drains resources, and devastates lives in slow motion. Its scars run deep,” says UNCCD Executive Secretary Ibrahim Thiaw. “Drought is no longer a distant threat.
“It is here, escalating, and demands urgent global cooperation. When energy, food, and water all go at once, societies start to unravel. That’s the new normal we need to be ready for.”
Dr. Mark Svoboda, report co-author and NDMC Director, says “this is not a dry spell. This is a slow-moving global catastrophe, the worst I’ve ever seen. This report underscores the need for systematic monitoring of how drought affects lives, livelihoods, and the health of the ecosystems that we all depend on.
“The Mediterranean countries represent canaries in the coal mine for all modern economies,” Svoboda adds. “The struggles experienced by Spain, Morocco and Türkiye to secure water, food, and energy under persistent drought offer a preview of water futures under unchecked global warming. No country, regardless of wealth or capacity, can afford to be complacent.”
A Widespread and Deepening Crisis
Drawing on data from hundreds of government, scientific, and media sources, the report highlights the most severely affected drought hotspots across multiple regions. These include parts of Africa — such as Somalia, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Botswana, and Namibia — the Mediterranean region, including Spain, Morocco, and Türkiye, as well as areas in Latin America (notably Panama and the Amazon Basin), Southeast Asia, and beyond. According to the press release:
Africa:
- Over 90 million people across Eastern and Southern Africa face acute hunger. Some areas have been enduring their worst ever recorded drought.
- Southern Africa, already drought-prone, was devastated with roughly 1/6th of the population (68 million) needing food aid in August 2024.
- In Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi, maize and wheat crops have failed repeatedly. In Zimbabwe alone, the 2024 corn crop was down 70% year on year, and maize prices doubled while 9,000 cattle died of thirst and starvation.
- In Somalia, the government estimated 43,000 people died in 2022 alone due to drought-linked hunger. As of early 2025, 4.4 million people — a quarter of the population — face crisis-level food insecurity, including 784,000 expected to reach emergency levels.
- Zambia suffered one of the world’s worst energy crises as the Zambezi River in April 2024 plummeted to 20% of its long-term average. The country’s largest hydroelectric plant, the Kariba Dam, fell to 7% generation capacity, causing blackouts of up to 21 hours per day and shuttering hospitals, bakeries, and factories.
Mediterranean:
- Spain: Water shortages hit agriculture, tourism, and domestic supply. By September 2023, two years of drought and record heat caused a 50% drop in Spain’s olive crop, causing its olive oil prices to double across the country.
- Morocco: The sheep population was 38% smaller in 2025 relative to 2016, prompting a royal plea to cancel traditional Eid sacrifices.
- Türkiye: Drought accelerated groundwater depletion, triggering sinkholes that present hazards to communities and their infrastructure while permanently reducing aquifer storage capacity.
Latin America
- Amazon Basin: Record-low river levels in 2023 and 2024 led to mass deaths of fish and endangered dolphins, and disrupted drinking water and transport for hundreds of thousands. As deforestation and fires intensify, the Amazon risks transitioning from a carbon sink to a carbon source.
- Panama Canal: Water levels dropped so low that transits were slashed by over one-third (from 38 to 24 ships daily between October 2023 and January 2024), causing major global trade disruptions. Facing multi-week delays, many ships were rerouted to longer, costlier paths via the Suez Canal or South Africa’s infamous Cape of Good Hope. Among the knock-on effects, U.S. soybean exports slowed, and UK grocery stores reported shortages and rising prices of fruits and vegetables.
Southeast Asia
- Drought disrupted production and supply chains of key crops such as rice, coffee, and sugar. In 2023-2024, dry conditions in Thailand and India, for example, triggered shortages leading to a 8.9% increase in the price of sugar and sweets in the U.S.
“A Perfect Storm” of El Niño and Climate Change
The 2023–2024 El Niño intensified the effects of an already warming climate, driving severe dryness across key agricultural and ecological regions. Its impacts were most devastating in climate hotspots — areas already grappling with rising temperatures, growing population demands, and vulnerable infrastructure.
“This was a perfect storm,” says report co-author Dr. Kelly Helm Smith, NDMC Assistant Director and drought impacts researcher. “El Niño added fuel to the fire of climate change, compounding the effects for many vulnerable societies and ecosystems past their limits.”
Co-author Dr. Cody Knutson, who oversees NDMC drought planning research, underlined a recent OECD estimate that a drought episode today carries an economic cost at least twice as high as in 2000, with a 35% to 110% increase projected by 2035.
“Ripple effects can turn regional droughts into global economic shocks,” she adds. “No country is immune when critical water-dependent systems start to collapse.”
Women and Children Among the Hardest Hit
Drought disproportionately affects the most vulnerable populations — including women, children, the elderly, pastoralists, subsistence farmers, and individuals with chronic illnesses. Health risks range from cholera outbreaks and acute malnutrition to dehydration and exposure to contaminated water.
The report underscores the especially heavy toll on women and children.
In Eastern Africa, the crisis has driven a surge in forced child marriages. In Ethiopia, where such marriages are illegal, rates more than doubled in the four regions hit hardest by drought. Families, desperate for survival, have turned to dowries as a source of income and a way to reduce the burden of feeding their children.
In Zimbabwe, hunger, the cost of education, and lack of access to sanitation have led to widespread school dropouts — particularly among girls.
In the Amazon, severe drought has devastated Indigenous and rural communities. In some regions, the Amazon River dropped to its lowest level ever recorded, cutting off entire towns from supplies and clean water. In one harrowing example, women in labour were left stranded without access to medical care or safe drinking water.
“The coping mechanisms we saw during this drought grew increasingly desperate,” says lead author Paula Guastello, NDMC drought impacts researcher. “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.
“As droughts intensify, it is critical that we work together on a global scale to protect the most vulnerable people and ecosystems and re-evaluate whether our current water use practices are sustainable in today’s changing world,” Guastello says.
“The report shows the deep and widespread impacts of drought in an interconnected world: from its rippling effects on price of basic commodities like rice, sugar and oil from Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean; to disruptions in access to drinking water and food in the Amazon due to low river levels, to tens of millions affected by malnutrition and displacement across Africa,” says Deputy Executive Secretary of UNCCD Andrea Meza.
“The evidence is clear,” adds Meza. “We must urgently invest in sustainable land and water management, land-use planning and integrated public policies to build our resilience to drought or face increasingly harsh consequences.
“Public policies and international cooperation frameworks must urgently prioritize drought resilience for the sake of societies and economies.”
Wildlife Killed En Masse
- Beyond the 200 endangered river dolphins and thousands of fish lost to the Amazon drought, impacts on wildlife include:
- 100 elephants died in Zimbabwe’s Hwange Park due to starvation and limited access to water between August and December 2023.
- Hippos were stranded in dry riverbeds in Botswana in 2024.
- Some countries last year culled wild animals (e.g., 200 elephants in Zimbabwe and Namibia) to feed rural communities and protect ecosystems from overgrazing.
Lessons and Recommendations
The report calls for urgent investments in drought preparedness, including:
- Stronger early warning systems and real-time drought and drought impact monitoring, including conditions contributing to food and water insecurity.
- Nature-based solutions such as watershed restoration and indigenous crop use.
- Resilient infrastructure, including off-grid energy and alternative water supply technologies.
- Gender-responsive adaptation, ensuring that women and girls are not further marginalized.
- Global cooperation, especially in protecting transboundary river basins and trade routes.
“Drought is not just a weather event — it can be a social, economic, and environmental emergency,” says Dr. Smith. “The question is not whether this will happen again, but whether we will be better prepared next time.”
“Drought has a disproportionate effect on those with fewest resources. We can act now to reduce the effects of future droughts by working to ensure that everyone has access to food, water, education, health care and economic opportunity.”
“The nations of the world have the resources and the knowledge to prevent a lot of suffering,” Smith adds. “The question is, do we have the will?”
By the Numbers:
- 68 million: People needing food aid in Southern Africa
- 23 million: People facing acute hunger in Eastern Africa
- 70%: Maize crop lost in Zimbabwe (2024)
- Up to 21 hours/day: Power outages in Zambia
- 200+: Endangered river dolphins killed by heat in the Amazon (Sept 2023)
- 38: Daily Panama Canal transits before drought; 24 during drought
- 50%: Olive oil production drop in Spain
- 1 million+: People in Somalia displaced due to drought (2022); 4.4 million at crisis-level hunger (early 2025); 1.7 million children suffering acute malnutrition (Apr–Jun 2025)
- 70%: Victoria Falls water level drop compared with 2023 (Zambia side, 2024)
- 100+: Drought-related elephant deaths in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park
- 1,600+: Estimated number of sinkholes in Türkiye due to groundwater depletion
- Nearly doubled: Price increase of maize in Zambia
- €22.84 billion: Spain’s investment in irrigation and water infrastructure
About the Report
The National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification sought to document drought’s recent impacts comprehensively to inform global policy and better prepare societies for future droughts. The report draws on over 250 peer-reviewed studies, official data sources, and news reports across more than a dozen countries and regions.
