Climate Exchange

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to enhance tribal drought monitoring capabilities by developing addi-

tional weather monitoring stations, along with a more detailed historical

climatology for determining appropriate drought triggers. The governance

approach undertaken by NIDIS focuses on building longer-term collabo-

rative partnerships and is also responsible for maintaining the structure

for supporting ongoing indicators development and public engagement.

NIDIS engages water resources and community level groups in:

• Setting goals and priorities, and involving partners in problem

definitions

• Using professionals from relevant agencies to build and secure a

common basis for action

• Producing collectively authored knowledge and information

gaps assessments and agreement on the way forward

• Integrating different types of knowledge in EWS, particularly in

terms of linking scientific and local knowledge

• Revisiting major or landmark drought events to show the

benefits of new information and coordination processes.

Thus the DEWS in this organizational model involves more than

simply disseminating a forecast. In each prototype location, the

design is polycentric. It allows for major innovations from the

research community, such as new information, technologies and

applications for detecting and communicating risks and warnings,

to be prototyped and introduced.

The centralized component of NIDIS (Program Office

and Implementation Team) has oversight and fiscal

responsibility, and provides political authority and

policy coherence across sectors. As noted in several

contexts, emergency management organizations can

rarely play that role.

The decentralized components

of problem definition, capacity-building and informa-

tion resources are based on the location of prototype

EWS development, taking advantage of local practices

and innovations. This is key to cost-effectiveness and

sustainability, at each level of governance.

While the

local social process is critical and shows important prac-

tical pathways for action, these are rarely sustained over

the long term. There are a growing number of positive

examples of such partnerships that cross spatial scales.

For other locations or countries, the NIDIS approach

might likely entail a change in the culture of public

administration. NIDIS is creating similar RDEWSs in

others watersheds, including the US Southeast and

the State of California. The lessons and tools from

these systems are being transferred to other states and

regions, including the Columbia Basin, the lower Great

Plains and the Chesapeake Bay tributaries, to create a

fully ‘national’ drought early warning presence.

Stream flow in Wheatfields Creek, upstream of Wheatfields Lake, in April 2006 (left) and April 2005 (right)

Image: Jolene Tallsalt Robertson, Navajo Nation Dept. of Water Resources