Drought Mitigation Center, United States National

 

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Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

1987

Citation

Published in Planning for Drought: Toward a Reduction of Societal Vulnerability, edited by Donald A. Wilhite and William E. Easterling with Deborah A. Wood, pp. 425–444

Comments

Copyright Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987.

Abstract

During the twentieth century, governments have typically responded to drought by providing emergency, short-term, and long-term assistance to distressed areas. Emergency and short-term assistance programs are often reactive, a kind of "band-aid" approach to more serious land and water management problems (Rosenberg, 1980; Hamer, 1985; Wilhite, et al., 1986). Actions of this type have long been criticized as inefficient and ineffective by the scientific community and government officials, as well as by recipients of relief. Long-term assistance programs are far fewer in number, but they are proactive. They attempt to lessen a region's vulnerability to drought through improved management and planning.

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