Drought vulnerability indices in Mexico

Abstract

Drought is one of the most harmful hydro climatic threats to society. Mexico has been historically affected by recurring and long-lasting droughts that have severely impacted society and the economy. Consequently, public programs and policies have been developed in order to reduce the country’s vulnerability to drought, hence the importance of identifying the spatial distribution and the dimension—even in relative terms only—of vulnerability in different regions from social, economic, and environmental perspectives. This article presents a method for obtaining indices and maps of vulnerability to drought in Mexico; indices and maps are based on a set of socioeconomic and environmental indicators that the method combines using an objective analytic procedure that identifies the most vulnerable states and municipalities from social, economic, and environmental perspectives, all of which converge in overall vulnerability to drought. The results obtained indicate that 38.9% of total Mexican population inhabits municipalities with high and very high degrees of overall vulnerability to drought. For this reason, it is necessary to continue implementing actions and preventive and mitigation strategies via public policies and social programs aimed at decreasing the country’s vulnerability to the occurrence of drought events. This is the only way to facilitate the necessary conditions to reduce the impact of drought and to decrease people’s vulnerability to this phenomenon.