Legislative Approaches to Drought Management

Droughts are a natural scourge with extremely serious socio‐economic consequences, leading not only to human suffering and misery, but also to grave environmental deterioration. Some of the impacts of drought may be curbed through technological, economic and legal measures. This paper deals particularly with the last of these. Legal measures are grouped according to their objectives, such as: the mitigation of drought impacts; the regulation of water use; the control of production and distribution of goods and services; the regulation of the relationship between man and the environment; and the promotion of general socio‐economic change. While developed countries have been able to manage production factors and promote, enact and enforce regulatory legislation, most developing countries face serious restrictions either to managing drought situations or to enforcing any kind of legislation intended to deal either with the impact of drought or with the artificial situations reinforcing these impacts.