The workshop “Drought Monitoring, Assessing and Planning under Global Climate Change”, held from 4 to 5 June 2012, was hosted by Beijing Normal University in collaboration with the National Drought Mitigation Center of the United States, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs/UN-SPIDER Beijing office and the International Center for Drought Risk Reduction. About 80 experts from 8 countries participated in the workshop. The event included seven sessions related to drought monitoring, drought assessment and drought mitigation and planning.
UN-SPIDER sponsored three experts from Sudan, Pakistan and the Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) based in Kenya to participate in the workshop. UN-SPIDER carried out a Technical Advisory Mission to Sudan in 2011, since then UN-SPIDER has supported experts from Sudan to participate in relevant workshops and plans to organize special training programmes. The participation of Pakistan and RCMRD was valuable since both countries host UN-SPIDER Regional Support Offices: SUPARCO in Pakistan and RCMRD in Kenya. The UN-SPIDER collaboration ensured that experts in the developing countries and regions that constantly suffer from drought could benefit from the knowledge and networking that the workshop offered in order to improve their drought monitoring programmes.
