Socioeconomic evaluation of drought effects.

Abstract

Drought situations can have significant impacts, affecting large areas and imposing relevant restrictions on multiple economic activities. The severity of those impacts is, normally, assessed through meteorological, agricultural and/or hydrological indices or even through estimation of water deficits or reduction of production yields (for agriculture). However, those assessments usually do not represent the socioeconomic importance of the impacts and the results are not comparable for different types of impacts or distinct regions. In this context the present work enunciates the main principles of a methodology developed specifically for socioeconomic evaluation of drought effects, regarding the main characteristics of a region (water sources and associated uses) and the possible hydrological propagation of effects of drought situations. Moreover it briefly describes the application to two drought prone areas in Portugal: the Guadiana and the Ribeiras do Algarve river basin case studies. Regarding the main specificities of the referred case studies, the economic activities (and water dependent sectors) considered for this methodology were the agricultural and the urban water supply sectors. For each, specific assessment procedures where developed. Nonetheless, the final result of those procedures is, in both cases, the estimation of the economic impacts caused by the drought situation, on a certain area of analysis. The final assessment of the socioeconomic relevance of drought impacts for that region is ensured through the division of the total economic impacts estimated, by region’s annual average GDP. The final result of this relation can, therefore, be compared for different regions of analysis.