A sign advising to pray for rain hangs above an exhibit area at the 47th Annual World Ag Expo in Tulare, February 12, 2014. About a hundred years ago, when urban water systems were being developed throughout the state, the city of Sacramento wrote protections from metering into its charter, vowing that residents would always have the right to use as much water as they needed. But on Tuesday, the state's top water regulators released a framework for enforcing California's first statewide mandatory restrictions on urban water use – cuts of 25 percent for non-agricultural users ordered last week by Democratic Governor Jerry Brown as a devastating drought enters its fourth year. (Photo by David McNew/Reuters)

Two workers shovel mud from the river as they look for gold on March 25, 2014 in Lampang, Thailand. Thai villagers from Wang Nuea, North of Thailand, look for gold in the river every year during the drought season. They are able to make an average around USD 15 per day, however two years ago they reached USD 200 in one day due to the river level dropping so much. The workers begin to search for gold at 10 AM and work until sunset, often working second jobs in the day in order to survive. (Photo by Borja Sanchez-Trillo/Getty Images)

A performer dances at a housing exhibition in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, September 27, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

The worst drought in 40 years has a cruel grip on Somalia. A struggling young government and militant violence have compounded to bring crisis to 6.7 million lives. The town of Baidoa is facing some of the harshest conditions. Surrounded by territory controlled by al-Shabaab militants and amid ongoing attacks, 160,000 people have had to leave their farms and are surviving in camps where hunger, thirst and cholera await them. (Photo by Peter Caton/Mercy Corps)

A woman carrying cabbage leaves on her head buys tomato at a market in Ahmedabad, India, November 9, 2015. India's villages face a sharp spike in food prices in 2016, as a second year of drought drives up the cost of ingredients such as sugar and milk, and poor transport infrastructure stops falling global prices from reaching rural areas. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

An Afghan girl carries water on her back as she climbs a hill in Kabul, Afghanistan February 20, 2017. A growing population is straining water supplies in Afghanistan's capital, forcing those who can afford it to dig unregulated wells ever deeper to tap a falling water table. Finding water in arid Afghanistan is virtually always a challenge, but a drop in the groundwater level in Kabul caused by overuse and drought is making it even more difficult for residents, especially the poor. (Photo by Omar Sobhani/Reuters)

Geology Professor Fetullah Arik takes measurements next to a large sinkhole on June 03, 2021, in Karapinar, Turkey. In Turkey’s Konya province, the heart of the country's agriculture sector, extreme drought conditions over the past two years are taking a heavy toll on farmers and the land. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

A Turkana man and a boy carrying a gun look on as a G3 battle rifle hangs from a structure used to dry fish at a fishing camp on the shores of Lake Turkana, some kilometres from Todonyang near the Kenya-Ethiopia border in northwestern Kenya October 12, 2013The Turkana are traditionally nomadic pastoralists, but they have seen the pasture that they need to feed their herds suffer from recurring droughts and many have turned to fishing. However, Lake Turkana is overfished, and scarcity of food and pastureland is fuelling long-standing conflict with Ethiopian indigenous Dhaasanac, who have seen grazing grounds squeezed by large-scale government agricultural schemes in southern Ethiopia. The Dhaasanac now venture ever deeper into Kenyan territory in search of fish and grass, clashing with neighbours. Fighting between the communities has a long history, but the conflict has become ever more fatal as automatic weapons from other regional conflicts seep into the area. While the Turkana region is short of basics like grass and ground-water, it contains other resources including oil reserves and massive, newly discovered underground aquifers. (Photo by Siegfried Modola/Reuters)