Beed district in the Marathwada region of Maharashtra is a drought prone district with dry black soils suited to cotton. It is a hilly terrain with dryland ecosystems. The area has hard-rock aquifers which make groundwater relatively expensive to access. TNC and MANAVLOK would further like to work towards long-term goals of building a body of field research on dryland ecosystems and the services of value for agriculture and using ecosystem-based solutions to facilitate the farmers’ management of drought risk. TNC and MANAVLOK would also like to work on influencing drought policy through interdisciplinary collaborations and action research around Decision Support Systems and Early Warning Systems for Droughts in India, and research on a framework for “Ecological Droughts”.