Droughts and water scarcity became one of the biggest challenges leading to food insecurity in 2022 in different regions and transboundary basins across the world. For instance, according to the WMO report State of Global Climate in 2022, in East Africa, rainfall has been below average for five consecutive wet seasons, the longest sequence in 40 years. Across the region, around 37 million people were facing acute food insecurity under the effects of the drought and other shocks. In Europe drought conditions were most severe in August, when rivers including the Rhine and the Danube fell to critically low levels.

Cooperation on shared waters can help to improve preparedness to climate related extremes and, particularly, to droughts, for example through the development of shared information systems or data exchange across sectors, enlarging the range and location of available measures, and sharing costs and benefits.

The global workshop brought together water, agriculture, climate and environment communities as well as drought experts to jointly discuss best practices and lessons learned in addressing droughts in transboundary basins.   

The global workshop was organized under the auspices of the Water Convention serviced by UNECE, under the leadership of the Netherlands and Switzerland, in cooperation with UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), World Bank, World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the International Network of Basin Organisations (INBO).

The workshop was followed by the fourteenth meeting of the Task Force on Water and Climate under the Water Convention on 28 February 2024, which reviewed all climate change activities as well as plans for the future under the Convention.