ABSTRACT
Droughts constitute some of the most urgent challenges that society must address. Due to anthropogenic pressure and human-induced climate change, future projections expect droughts to escalate and most heavily affect those who are socially, economically, and politically disadvantaged. However, the world still seems unprepared to face future droughts, much less address their unjust implications. As of today, it is difficult to foresee when and for how long droughts are likely to occur, not to mention what their impacts will be. One of the reasons for this impasse is that scientists have not yet fully grasped the socioenvironmental complexity of droughts. On the one hand, natural sciences tend to homogenize society into a unified whole and consider social processes as apolitical. On the other hand, critical social sciences have not yet appreciated the heterogeneity and multitude of the biophysical processes co-producing drought. In response to these research gaps, this chapter engages with both natural as well as social sciences as a way to account for the environmental and societal complexities of drought. Ultimately such an interdisciplinary approach claims to offer a more effective way to address future droughts, one that deals with the root causes of droughts rather than their symptoms.
