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Rajib Shaw

Drought is a perennial phenomenon in some parts of the world. Drought is a slow-onset disaster, which is often not initially visible. When it does become visible, it is already too late to respond. Unlike other disasters, drought can be predicted well in advance. Also, most of the drought impacts are prominent in the rural areas, affecting the livelihood options like agriculture, aquaculture, animal husbandry, etc. In developing countries, the key challenge of early warning is its last mile, which means to bring the early warning information to the end users in rural communities. Based on the early warning, the local communities can prepare themselves through shifting the cultivation pattern and looking for the alternative livelihoods. In many communities, the resilience is built through experiences and different indigenous knowledge and practices are developed over time.

The Monsoon Asian region has a much wider rainfall distribution than other regions of the world. The countries in this region are characterized mostly by floods and typhoons, which result from the interplay among the ocean, the atmosphere, and the land. Thus, many factors affect the strength of the rainfall, including sea surface temperatures in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, variations in solar output, land snow cover and soil moisture over the Asian continent, and the position and strength of prevailing winds. The links between these factors and monsoons appear to wax and wane over time, and the observational record is too short to explain this longer-term variability. Precipitation and surface wind maps of Asia during the summer months of June to August show the average spatial patterns of monsoon circulation and moisture.

Myanmar is located between 9deg. 55min. and 28deg. 15min. north latitude and 92deg. 10min. and 101deg. 10min. east longitude. It is the westernmost country in southeast Asia. Its bordering countries are Bangladesh, India, China, Laos, and Thailand. Over 50% of the eastern coastline of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea constitutes the western border. The country occupies a total land area of 676,577km² and is home to 57.5 million people in 14 states and regions, per 2008 estimate. The general topography of the country is high in the north and the west with north–south-oriented mountain ranges extending from the Himalayas. The eastern side of the country is a wide plateau connected to Yunnan, China. The central area and the more southern parts of the country are relatively low. Rivers run from north to south in most parts of the country. A map of Myanmar's states and regions is shown in Fig. 1.