India, Sept. 16 -- Drought has emerged as a planetary environmental crisis. Long experienced as episodic and locally occurring, recent trends show that in a changed climate and warming planet, drought is not limited to certain geography, but is spreading exponentially across continents, and becoming near chronic in vast areas.

In 2025, the world experienced the sixth most drought-affected year since 1950. Meteorological drought (severe moisture deficit) gripped 30 per cent of global land area. An analysis published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment estimates that the spread in 2025 was nearly three times that in the 1990s. Importantly, lack of rain is no longer the singular reason for a drought to evolve; events gripping the world cu...