Liberia National Drought Plan.

This National Drought Plan is a nationwide sectoral document aiming at establishing a comprehensive mechanism where systems are put in place to regularly assess and monitor the adverse impacts of drought and the effects of actions being employed to mitigate it. The Plan also intends to ensure effective communication with all stakeholders and populations about drought in order to deal with whatever future signs while at the same time maintaining a drought recovery program. The overall target of this Plan will be achieved through the following Strategic Objectives (i) identify and build the capacities of national institutions and human resources for early warning and drought monitoring; (ii) identify national and regional hubs for the setting up of National Meteorological Stations; (iii) establish processes and methodologies, and identify specific activities for the collection of data on drought; (iv) identify vulnerable landscapes, populations, sectors and build their resilience to drought; (v) develop and operationalize drought recovery programs; (vi) build knowledge management network to ensure that food production practices and systems are climate-proof; (vii) design public education and awareness strategy about drought; (viii) mobilize financial and human resources for the implementation of the drought plan. The National Drought Plan considers the following priority intervention areas with an emphasis on the issue of gender integration (i) early warning, strengthening specific national institutions to enable them to generate, record, store, and share weather-related information and data that will improve the planning of various interventions in a timely and effective manner; (ii) preparedness and mitigation, through the establishment of a multidisciplinary National Drought Task Force, including all key stakeholders and coordinating the implementation of the Drought Plan; (iii) response, preparing a Drought Contingency Plan before a drought occurs; (iv) communication, to ensure that it is understood and accepted by the audience.
The sectors that in Liberia are mostly affected by the drought are (i) forestry, where it is witnessed a decrease in the economic and social benefits and an exacerbation of the incidence of poverty; (ii) agriculture, dominated in the country by large-scale monoculture plantations, traditional farming, and mainly dependent on rainfall. In this sector the occurrence of any drought event will also result in deaths of both domestic and wild animal population; (iii) fisheries, which is a sector that makes up a significant proportion of needed animal protein in the diets of Liberians and with a gender-inclusive market, involving fish mongers (mostly women) trading between the fishermen (mostly men) and the consumers (men and women); (iv) health, since any occurrence of drought incidence in Liberia has the potential to disrupt natural systems, making the population very vulnerable to the spread of diseases (cholera, malaria, onchocerciasis, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, etc.); (v) mining, an extremely energy-intensive sector that requires several suitable natural conditions including habitable climate and access to water resources to enable the extraction of resources and their subsequent processing; (vi) gender, the reason why the National Drought Plan considers the issue of gender as key in achieving equality between men and women of different social groups, age, tribes, backgrounds, etc. in order to build their resilience to the impact of drought and other natural phenomena including climate change.
Among the crucial elements of the Plan, it is mentioned the assessment of drought risks and impacts that shall (i) define the most vulnerable economic and social sectors to drought; (ii) determine population groups most vulnerable to drought; (iii) evaluate the risk levels and impacts of specific economic and social sectors and populations; (iv) determine the legal and social concerns of drought; (v) assess the range of environmental issues arising from drought.