Adaptation to Rainfall Variability and Unpredictability: New Dimensions of Old Challenges and Opportunities

The variability and unpredictability of rainfall is a neglected but most hazardous dimension of climate and water resources and a tangible development predicament. Describing and analysing the world and its water resources in terms of statistical averages and trends is natural and necessary, for example, as an input in planning and policy. But the very complex and dynamic reality must be duly recognized. Policies must include a range of approaches and the political will and skill needed to balance attention to ‘privileged problems’ and to problems that have been ‘neglected’. This entails a widening of the water resource perception to include the various fractions of rainfall. An improved efficiency of the rains would translate into the notion of ‘more crop per rain drop’. A coordinated and flexible management of the physical and biological resources of a landscape and a capitalizing on the abilities of people, communities and governing bodies and agencies is required to deal with the complexity.