The Gambia National Drought Plan.

This National Drought Plan seeks to provide a national mechanism whereby Government and stakeholders, both national and international, can effectively and systematically assess drought conditions, develop mitigation actions and programs to reduce risk in advance of drought, and develop response options/actions that minimize economic losses/stresses, environmental losses and social hardships during drought. The Plan incorporates a National Drought Action Plan. The overall goal of the Plan is to enable the country to prepare itself in responding to disasters, and particularly drought, with regards to assessing, risk-based national drought management policies and interventions. The specific goals are: i. Setting a functioning National Drought Taskforce responsible the implementation of the National Drought Plan; ii. Identifying and setting National Office with authority to declare drought and authorizing resources mobilization and intervention actions; iii. Formulate/strengthen national policies on natural disasters, particularly droughts with good management strategies; iv. Strengthen key institutions on capacity needs (human, material) from national to local levels in implementing the drought plan implementing risk based management; v. Establishing a national Drought Monitoring and Early Warning Systems vi. Setting an Emergency Relief and Response mechanism.
This National Drought Plan is aligned to and will support the implementation of the National Climate Change Policy (NCCP). The Plan foresees strenghtening of the capicity and powers of the The National Disaster Management Agency, which has the authority to manage disasters and emergencies of sub-national, national and international importance. The National Drought Action Plan sets out key action that must be undertaken for the development and implementation of the Gambia National Drought Plan and deals with monitoring, reporting and verification of the implementation.