The Threat List

Status:Disaster

GlobalDisasterDeep-sourcedmedium confidenceSourcing reviewed 2026-09-17

Drought

Drought is a widespread, recurrent hazard that causes water shortages, crop failures, hunger, livelihood losses and ecosystem degradation. The supplied evidence indicates very high historical mortality and substantial economic harm, although it does not establish a single global event total or current-year estimate.

Severity score

77.9

Critical · default weighting

Trajectory

Steady

How this is ranked

What this is

Score breakdown

Each factor is a 0–100 relative severity index, not the raw figure or a specific time period. The actual counts and periods are listed under "Standardized Impact" on the right.

Loss of life

74

Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.

Lives negatively impacted

86

People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.

Financial cost

77

Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.

Environmental impact

76

Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.

Trajectory

74

Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.

Audit trail

Everything this entry has been through — when it was first searched for, queued, reviewed and approved, and how its figures and rank have moved since.

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