The Medroplan Guidelines for drought management

The purpose of this paper is to report on the development of drought management guidelines that provide Mediterranean countries with a framework for effective and exemplifies many other drought-prone regions with rapidly expanding populations that are placing increased pressure on already limited water supplies. Drought planning and management includes activities and actions taken by any interested individual or collective group. The Meda-Water project MEDROPLAN has synthesised academic and policy aspects of drought planning and developed Drought Management Guidelines (the "Guidelines" from now on) that appeal to a broad audience the non-technical users and are especially oriented to the support of policy making. The adaptive and dynamic character of the guidelines presented in tis paper includes the following aspects: (i) The information intends to complement the ongoing regional and country water basin planning efforts and the the ongoing agricultural policy initiatives; (ii) both long term measures that are to be used to prevent and mitigate the effects of drought are considered; (iii)the design of the guidelines is broad enough to incorporate new criteria for establishing priorities as societies change or as scientific and technological aspects of drought management improve; and (iv) the approach acknowledges the differential social vulnerabilities and emphasizes water shortages.