Hello everyone, I am Satyender Yadav, a recent M.Tech graduate in Soil and Water Conservation Engineering. I joined this community after completing the UNCCD course on Drought Risk and Impact Assessment.
My research focuses on quantifying climate-induced hazards across diverse landscapes: from mapping drought susceptibility in the arid regions of Rajasthan to assessing multi-hazard risks (Landslides & Floods) in the Himalayan region. Leveraging Google Earth Engine and Machine Learning, I aim to develop robust geospatial models for disaster resilience.
I am actively looking for PhD opportunities in Europe and look forward to discussing drought strategies with this network.
You can connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/satyenderyadav17/

This is an interesting piece about drought and agricultural production. See the link:
https://blog.icimod.org/cryosphere-water-risks/drought-in-the-grain-bas…

Drought in the grain basket: A silent agricultural crisis in Nepal’s Madhesh Province

By Sravan Shrestha, Sarthak Shrestha and Vuyasi Rajbhandari

In Nepal’s Madhesh Province, widely known as the nation’s ‘Grain Basket’, an unprecedented monsoon failure in July 2025 has led to a severe drought, disrupting rice transplantation and threatening food security. ICIMOD’s Earth Observation analysis reveals over 40% of rice fields under stress, with potential losses of up to 450,000 metric tons, posing a nationwide economic and food crisis.

The Government of Nepal officially declared a drought emergency in the Madhesh Province on 24 July 2025, a rare occurrence in a region more often in the headlines for floods. While devastating floods and landslides across South Asia dominate the news, a slower, quieter, but no less catastrophic disaster is unfolding in the southeastern plains of Nepal. In Madhesh Province, widely known as Nepal’s ‘Grain Basket,’ a slow-onset drought is gripping farming communities at the heart of the nation’s food system.

Despite being in the middle of the monsoon season, the region has experienced persistently below-average rainfall. On 1 July, the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) of Nepal forecasted low precipitation in Madhesh Province during this monsoon, as shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1 : July–September rainfall prediction (highest probability) | Source: DHM
This rainfall deficit has severely disrupted the rice transplantation calendar, the most time-sensitive and critical phase of the rice production cycle. This delay is not just an agricultural concern; it signals the early stages of a food security crisis.

As of 27 July 2025, only 51.82% of rice land in Madhesh had been transplanted, compared to 92% by the same week in 2024. Madhesh typically accounts for around 27% of Nepal’s total rice-growing area (approximately 353,441 hectares) and produces nearly 1.28 million metric tons of rice annually, with an average yield of 3.63 metric tons per hectare. Such a sharp decline of over 40% is unprecedented in recent years. Any disruption cascades throughout the growing season in a farming community where planting windows are tightly synchronised with rainfall.

In response to these growing concerns, in July 2025 the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) conducted a situational analysis of the drought’s impact on rice production in Madhesh using a combination of satellite imagery, climatic indicators, and agricultural statistics. Analysis of Sentinel-2 (an Earth Observation satellite) imagery showed a significant reduction in vegetative cover in Madhesh province compared to the same period in 2024, as shown in Figure 2.

Drought in the grain basket A silent agricultural crisis in Nepals Madhesh Province
Figure 2: Sentinel 2 images comparing the cropland situation on 15 July 2024 and 18 July 2025 | Source: Sentinel Hub EO Browser
Based on our assessment, ICIMOD estimates that over 40% of Madhesh’s rice-growing area, nearly 142,000 hectares, is under significant drought stress. This could result in a potential production loss of approximately 400,000 – 450,000 metric tons of rice. Even if rains resume, recovery may be limited due to poor seedling establishment, soil moisture depletion, and missed crop growth stages.

The implications are severe. Nationally, Nepal grows rice on about 1.33 million hectares, producing over 4.9 million metric tons annually. A production shock in Madhesh could ripple across the country, raising food prices, increasing import dependency, impacting trade balances, and reducing household incomes. With agriculture contributing 24.1% to Nepal’s GDP and rice as its staple crop, this drought has become not only a regional crisis but a national economic and food security threat.

The Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) showed much of the region under moderate to severe drought in the Madhesh province, especially Mahottari, Dhanusa, and Siraha districts, as shown in Figure 3, which is further confirmed by the Vegetation Condition Index (VCI), derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite imaging data, as shown in Figure 4.

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Figure 3: SPI map of Madhesh Province in July using Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS) | Source: ICIMIOD
VCI based drought condition
Figure 4: VCI map of Madhesh Province in July using MODIS data | Source: ICIMOD
Both figures 3 and 4 show that the Mahottari, Dhanusa, and Siraha districts of Madhesh province are experiencing the most critical drought stress. The VCI map highlights widespread extreme drought throughout these districts, reflecting significant vegetation stress, while the SPI map confirms severe to extreme dry conditions due to prolonged rainfall deficits. These Earth Observation tools validate the scenario on the ground and demonstrate the value of remote sensing for early warning, damage assessment, and decision support.

Beyond the satellite-based evidence, Madhesh Province is currently experiencing all four major forms of drought. Meteorological drought has emerged from the persistent failure of the monsoon, while a hydrological drought, driven by an unusually dry winter, has drastically reduced water levels in rivers, canals, and groundwater reserves. These conditions have triggered a severe agricultural drought, with little to no rice transplantation taking place across the region. The crisis has now extended into a socio-economic drought, as prolonged water shortages disrupt livelihoods, strain local economies, and impact society.

As a response to this domino effect, the Madhesh Provincial Government declared the province as drought-stricken on 26 June 2025, followed by the Provincial Disaster Management Committee urging the federal government to escalate this status on 22 July 2025, resulting in a drought emergency being declared in the Madhesh Province.

To catalyse this, ICIMOD co-convened a multi-stakeholder meeting on 5 August 2025, bringing together representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development (MoALD), and development partner World Food Programme (WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The meeting served as a platform to discuss the development of a MoALD-led technical task force that would facilitate data sharing, produce timely advisories, and provide evidence-based policy recommendations. The proposed task force is expected to play a key role in enabling anticipatory action and strengthening Nepal’s drought resilience in the months and years ahead.

The unfolding drought crisis in Madhesh underscores the urgent need for robust early warning systems, timely response mechanisms, and science-driven policy action. In addition to this, recognising the relationship between Chure hills (upstream) and Madhesh (downstream), Integrated Water Resource Management is especially important in regions like this. As a regional knowledge centre, ICIMOD remains committed to supporting evidence-based decision-making through Earth Observation technologies, monitoring and outlook systems like the National Drought Watch Nepal, and strategic partnerships with government and development partners. The insights gained from this assessment highlight the scale of agricultural vulnerability and the transformative potential of integrating geospatial tools into disaster risk reduction and food security planning.

This activity is being implemented under the "Building Capabilities for Green, Climate-Resilient and Inclusive Development" (HI-GRID) project in the Lower Koshi River Basin in Nepal, supported by the Government of Australia.

This is the link to an interesting piece below: https://news.mongabay.com/2025/08/in-nepal-artificial-ponds-offer-droug…

In Nepal, artificial ponds offer drought relief despite lingering doubts
By Mukesh Pokhrel

Dear colleagues,

I’m sharing the press release from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) confirming that 2025 was one of the three warmest years on record, continuing the streak of exceptionally high global temperatures. According to WMO, the global average surface temperature in 2025 was about 1.44 °C above pre-industrial levels, with 2023–2025 being the three warmest consecutive years in the instrumental record. This confirmation is based on a consolidated analysis of multiple international datasets.

https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/wmo-confirms-2025-was-one-of-warmest-…

A brief from National University of Singapore
https://www.isas.nus.edu.sg/papers/prolonged-drought-in-nepals-plains-c…

Prolonged Drought in Nepal’s Plains: Causes, Effects and Remedies

by Puspa Sharma

4 August 2025

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Summary

The current prolonged drought in Nepal’s Madhesh Province is a result of both local environmental destruction and climate change. Nepal needs to initiate serious reforms to undo the local environmental damages and make its case for global climate justice.

Nepal’s Madhesh Province has been experiencing prolonged drought this monsoon season. There is a severe lack of drinking water. Water unavailability for even basic household needs indicates that the plantation of rice – the staple of most Nepalis – has been disrupted. Rice has been planted in only about 50 per cent of the rice planting area in the province. In areas where plantations have been made, the fields have gone dry.

Due to its significant contribution to national rice production, the Tarai/Madhesh region is commonly referred to as the granary of Nepal. There could be a significant reduction in Nepal’s rice production this year. This does not bode well for the country’s food security and farmers’ livelihoods.

The provincial government of Madhesh Province has declared the province as drought-affected. It distributed drinking water through tankers and fire trucks. Given the precarious situation, the federal government has declared Madhesh Province a disaster-hit zone. Nepal’s Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli took an aerial survey of the drought-affected districts. He announced immediate installations of 500 deep-bore wells in several places of the affected region.

Why is Nepal’s Madhesh Province facing such an unprecedented crisis? There are two key reasons.

The first is the lack of adequate rainfall in the region this monsoon. Contrary to forecasts that Nepal would experience unusually high rainfall this season, there has been extremely little rainfall, notably in the Tarai/Madhesh region. The prime factor for this is probably climate change. Even weather forecasts have become more erratic.

The second is the depletion of underground water, which is a prime source for both household use and irrigation. The Tarai/Madhesh region has experienced a gradual depletion of groundwater levels over the past decades for several reasons. The most important of them is the destruction of the Chure region.

The Chure hills, also called the Siwaliks, lie immediately north of the Tarai/Madhesh plains. The average elevation of these hills is about 1,000 metres. The Chure region mostly consists of forests and plays a most significant role in maintaining the Tarai/Madhesh’s ecological and environmental balance. It gets more rainfall compared to the Tarai/Madhesh region. Moreover, the soft rocks and soil of the Chure region enable good rainwater absorption and groundwater recharge. Thus, the region is the main source of surface and groundwater for downstream areas in Tarai/Madhesh.

Over the past few decades, activities such as deforestation for infrastructure development (mainly road constructions) and human settlements in and around the Chure region have resulted in massive destruction of Chure’s ecology. The most destructive of all the activities has been the uncontrolled and haphazard extraction of sand, gravel and boulders from and around the Chure region, whether legally or illegally. Such extractions have disturbed the natural water absorption and recharging process over many years, which has caused the current dry conditions in Madhesh Province.

Environmental impacts of uncontrolled mining of sand, gravel and boulders from the Chure region have long been identified in Nepal. This had invited enormous debates in the past, particularly when the government announced the extraction and export of these materials to generate revenue. Several local governments have also encouraged these activities for revenue generation purposes.

In 2009, under the initiation of the then President Ram Baran Yadav – the first President of the Republic of Nepal and who hails from Madhesh Province – the government initiated the President Chure-Conservation Programme. This was followed by the setting up of the President Chure-Terai Madhesh Conservation Development Committee in 2014. The Committee prepared the Chure Conservation Masterplan. In the initial years after the formation of the Committee and the release of the Masterplan, there were high hopes that this initiative would halt Chure’s destruction. However, after a few years, the initial momentum lost pace. The destructive activities continued unabated. A strong nexus between contractors and politicians with corrupt intentions are said to be among the major reasons for the continued destruction of the Chure region.

To address Madhesh Province’s drought crisis, the major, long-term solution is to complete halt Chure’s destruction. It is also essential to restore Chure’s ecology. If the government is fully committed, it can bring an end to the extraction activities immediately. Restoring Chure’s ecology might take some time.

To respond to the current crisis, the government might have found the installation of deep bore wells as the most effective means to provide immediate relief to the affected people in Madhesh Province and, hence, decided accordingly. However, several experts and environmentalists have rightly been sceptical about this measure and warned the government that this could be counterproductive. Due to the massively receded aquifers, it is uncertain whether and how many deep bore wells would be able to function successfully. Even if some of them will be able to reach the aquifers and pump out water, they will further deplete the already receded water table underground. This could further jeopardise the drought conditions in the region in the years to come. Perhaps it is high time to rethink the agricultural development model.

Climate change is certainly an important factor in the current crisis. This is set to worsen in the years ahead. The major climate change contributors should also bear their share of responsibility in addressing the current crisis. When Nepal initiates reforms to address the local conditions that have caused the crisis, it will have a stronger moral standing in making its case for climate justice globally.