Considering the importance of water, the UN inserted, in its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the availability of drinking water, its sustainable use and access to sanitation. This demonstrates the organization’s commitment and its understanding of the relevance of the theme and its impacts on health, education, work and income. In Brazil, water scarcity is stronger in the Northeast, a region potentially more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, especially the semiarid.

Thus, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) developed, based on cooperation with the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), a series of studies that can contribute to the understanding of this phenomenon and to the development of strategies to overcome it. This work was coordinated by the Semear Internacional Program (PSI) team, a grant from IFAD, carried out by IICA – Instituto Interamericano de Cooperação para a Agricultura.

The result presented in this book aims to analyze the impact of extreme weather events on employment and income on the labor market in municipalities in the Northeast and the semiarid region. The findings show that low rainfall and drought are associated with a sectoral reallocation of employment towards formal wage labor, while the share of informal and self-employed jobs is reduced. The UFBA and PSI teams believe in the importance of sharing this information in order to contribute to the search for solutions and improvement of public policies in the field of confronting poverty in the Brazilian semiarid region