Page - (000320) - in Evaluating Climate Change Action for Sustainable Development

considerable crop losses, thousands of cattle deaths. The drought has been threat- ening theconsiderablegains in termsofeconomic, social, andhumandevelopment that the region has experienced in the past several decades and placing many communities at risk of slipping back into extreme poverty1 Reservoirs are at historically low levels, and in September, 2015, Ceara´ state had 80% of its municipalities dependingonwater trucks.2 Aligned with international discussions for improving drought resilience, most notably theHighLevelMeetingonNationalDroughtPolicy(HMNDP), inGeneva, Switzerland inMarch2013,Brazil’sMinistry ofNational Integration (MI) created an intra-ministerial work group to look critically at Brazil’s droughtmanagement approaches, as well as to study the possibility of designing a national drought policy.3 At the HMNDP, Brazil declared its commitment to improve drought planning and management in order to reduce impacts and increase resilience to future droughts and climate change. Within this context, theMI requested theWorld Bank to support a process to shift theparadigmfromreactive toproactivedroughtmanagement.Specifically,MI requested: (i) to helpwith an ‘institutional upgrade’ through structuring and facil- itating a more permanent institutional approach and response to drought, and improving integration within and between federal and state institutions; and (ii) to helpwith a ‘technical upgrade’ through developing concrete droughtmon- itoring tools and preparedness plans/protocols. The Brazil Drought Preparedness andClimateResiliencenon-lending technicalassistanceprogram(DroughtNLTA) was thus designed and initiated in July 2013 to address this request. 17.3 TheDroughtNLTAProgramConcept The nature of themain challenge that theDroughtNLTAprogramaims to tackle (i.e., fosteringproactivedroughtpolicyandmanagement),necessitates in itsdesign a cross-sector program both internally to theWBand externallywith the various partners involved.Water,climate,agriculture,anddisaster riskmanagementare the fourkey-areas involved, and theactivities also involvepartners fromrelatedareas, such as environment. Adding another layer to the complexity of the program, more than 120 pro- fessionals from50multi-sector partners are involvedwith the effort: representing the federal government, federal institutions that act bothnationally and regionally, 1More information canbe foundhere: http://www.brasil.gov.br/observatoriodaseca/index.html 2Source: “Seca:Ceara´ tem146municı´piosabastecidosporcarros-pipa”.Availableathttp://www. cearaagora.com.br/site/2015/09/seca-ceara-tem-146-municipios-abastecidos-por-carros-pipa/ 3Source:Ministe´rioda Integrac¸~aoNacional (MI)e Instituto InteramericanodeCooperac¸~aoparaa Agricultura (IICA). 2013. Estudos Referentes ao Diagno´stico da Polı´tica nacional de Secas no Brasil: Relato´rio Contendo Diagno´stico e Embasamento para a Formulac¸~ao de uma Polı´tica Nacional deSecas noBrasil.Consultor,Otamar deCarvalho. 308 E.Bretan andN.L.Engle