Veness William A, Balfour Nancy, O'Keeffe Jimmy, Buytaert Wouter
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Grantham Institute - Climate Change and the Environment, Imperial College London, United Kingdom.
Centre for Humanitarian Change, Kenya.
Disasters. 2025 Jul;49(3):e12687. doi: 10.1111/disa.12687.
Droughts are a primary driver of humanitarian crises in arid regions, yet early warning systems that index humanitarian financing often omit water security data in favour of food security monitoring. Based on 42 expert interviews assessing management barriers and information needs during the 2020-24 drought in the Horn of Africa, resulting in an estimated 71,100 excess deaths in Somalia alone, we find water security data to be critical in shifting management to proactive mechanisms. Monitoring of water availability (such as water quality and groundwater/surface water levels) and water access (such as water prices and household surveys) is needed to design solutions that proactively mitigate water shortages and their secondary impacts on food security (such as through borehole rehabilitation, alternative water supplies, and cash transfers). Furthermore, if causal relations between water and food insecurity are analysed, the cost-benefit basis for financing water supply interventions can be more completely propositioned, and food insecurity hotspots can be better anticipated.
干旱是干旱地区人道主义危机的主要驱动因素，但将人道主义融资纳入指数的早期预警系统往往忽略水安全数据，而倾向于粮食安全监测。基于对42位专家的访谈，这些访谈评估了2020年至2024年非洲之角干旱期间的管理障碍和信息需求，仅索马里就估计有71100人因干旱而过早死亡，我们发现水安全数据对于将管理转向积极主动机制至关重要。需要监测水的可获得性（如水质量和地下水/地表水水位）和用水情况（如水价和家庭调查），以设计出积极缓解水资源短缺及其对粮食安全的次生影响的解决方案（如通过修复水井、提供替代水源和现金转移）。此外，如果分析水不安全与粮食不安全之间的因果关系，就可以更全面地提出为供水干预措施融资的成本效益依据，并能更好地预测粮食不安全热点地区。
