If you have the same rainfall today as you do tomorrow, but tomorrow someone steals all of the water and leaves you with none, is that a drought? Not technically...but who the fuck cares about the technicality?? You don't have any water!

Yes, in your example, the person who stole the water would have stolen the water.

In real life, in Chile, who "stole all the water" ? How did they "steal" the water?

On a related note, many famous famines went from stressful-but-survivable bad harvests to mass casualty events because of mismanagement: the Irish Potato Famine, the Holodomor, the Great Leap Forward...

It seems the villain here could be the Chilean government, for prioritizing the tech economy over the people at a time when it matters most.