El Niño and La Niña recur as powerful compounding drivers of drought across the world's drylands, yet seasonal signals rarely convert into action before harvests and herds are lost. This side event introduces IWMI–CGIAR's ENSO Outlook tool, an open climate service that fuses global ENSO forecasts with exposure, water and food-security data, then translates them into pre-agreed, pre-financed anticipatory action at country scale. Drawing on cases from Africa to Mongolia's rangelands, panelists show how forecast-based triggers can strengthen drought resilience for farming and pastoral communities and advance the UNCCD's Riyadh drought agenda.