Drought is one of the hazards that affects an important number of people and generates significative economic losses in the world. Drought patterns and impacts may worsen due to climate change; thus, an urgent need arises to address drought events under a proactive approach, which allows tackling underlying causes of drought and vulnerability factors in order to prevent, reduce, mitigate or adapt to drought impacts. However, drought is traditionally managed under a crisis-based approach rather than on a risk-based approach. Moving towards a proactive approach is key to improve drought policy responses under an adaptive and risk-based perspective, but limited literature is available on the progress towards a risk-based approach to drought management adoption. Thus, there is a need to contribute to this area of study by enhancing our understanding on how we are responding to drought worldwide, particularly for the South America region. The aim of this chapter is to analyze the characteristics of drought policy at a national level by identifying the existing regulatory and planning tools and their advances towards a proactive approach adoption to deal with drought events. The results will provide a regional overview on the progress, gaps and opportunities of improvement and outline recommendations for decision-makers to improve drought management at national level.