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. 2021 Feb 1:754:142210.
doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142210. Epub 2020 Sep 4.

Compound natural and human disasters: Managing drought and COVID-19 to sustain global agriculture and food sectors

Ashok Mishra  1 , Ellen Bruno  2 , David Zilberman  2
Affiliations
Free PMC article

Compound natural and human disasters: Managing drought and COVID-19 to sustain global agriculture and food sectors

Ashok Mishra et al. Sci Total Environ. .
Free PMC article

Abstract

Individually, both droughts and pandemics cause disruptions to global food supply chains. The 21st century has seen the frequent occurrence of both natural and human disasters, including droughts and pandemics. Together their impacts can be compounded, leading to severe economic stress and malnutrition, particularly in developing countries. Understanding how droughts and pandemics interact, and identifying appropriate policies to address them together and separately, is important for maintaining a robust global food supply. Herein we assess the impacts of each of these disasters in the context of food and agriculture, and then discuss their compounded effect. We discuss the implications for policy, and suggest opportunities for future research.

Keywords: Agriculture; COVID-19; Drought.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest We acknowledge that our manuscript is original, and it is not submitted for review in another journal. We have provided references for the data set used in our study.

Figures

Unlabelled Image
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Global map showing drought condition and COVID-19 cases during the months of June 2020. The co-occurrence of drought and COVID-19 occurs in different geographical regions worldwide. Drought map is based on the Standardised Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI1), and the negative value associated with SPEI1 represents different magnitudes of drought severity; COVID-19 numbers were obtained from Johns Hopkins University (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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