Presidential Memo and Federal Action Plan for Long-Term Drought Resilience

The White House has just released the “Presidential Memorandum: Building National Capabilities for Long-Term Drought Resilience,” and the accompanying “Federal Action Plan of the National Drought Resilience Partnership.”  The memo is addressed to the heads of executive departments and Federal agencies to urge them to sustain and expand their efforts to reduce the vulnerability of communities to the impacts of drought by implementing policies and taking actions to achieve the President’s drought resilience goals related to:

  1. Data Collection and Integration
  2. Communicating Drought Risk to Critical Infrastructure
  3. Drought Planning and Capacity Building
  4. Coordination of Federal Drought Activity
  5. Market-Based Approaches for Infrastructure and Efficiency
  6. Innovative Water Use, Efficiency, and Technology

The Federal Action Plan lays out a series of activities to fulfill the drought resilience goals and outlines the ways member departments and agencies of the National Drought Resilience Partnership can use existing resources to take additional steps to work with state, regional, tribal, and local partners to respond to drought and lay the foundation for long-term resilience within existing authorities.
For more information about these efforts, visit the web site at:  https://www.whitehouse.gov/campaign/drought-in-america.