Final Blog Post

 

Final Hazard Report; Ethiopia

    In Ethiopia, they face primarily only 2 kinds of natural hazards. Surprisingly enough these two hazards occur in the same region. These two hazards are flooding and droughts, these hazards typically happen in the Somali region due to climate change, human interference, and overall due to seasonal changes. However, droughts tend to happen due to human interference such as deforestation, overgrazing, and over-cultivation thus causing droughts to become more and more common in the Somali region. Flooding, it is mainly due to heavy rainfall called torrential rain. This type of rain is heavy, hard, and fast (pictured below), which is a huge main cause of flooding in Ethiopia especially with hardly any drainage in Ethiopia besides natural drainages such as rivers. Ethiopia has little to no warning or precautions taken when floods and droughts happen, so these hazards affect people in horrendous ways, which is why these hazards need to become a priority and be addressed. Especially considering it is causing Ethiopians to lose their homes and food sources. 

    Some recommendations to help or reduce damage to Ethiopia from the hazards are used by other countries today. For example, to battle deforestation which causes droughts, countries have been planting more trees and overall plants to prevent a decrease in rainfall. Planting trees and other plants would be a huge helping hand for Ethiopia, especially taking into consideration how few trees they have (The first picture is a great example of how they have hardly any forestation). Except it wasn't always like this, there are still certain parts of Ethiopia that have huge and beautiful forests. In addition, I believe harvesting and conserving rainwater can help when it comes to droughts and savoring it. This is done by multiple countries facing droughts. 

  

  However, for flooding one main thing that can help reduce the amount of damage done to Ethiopia immensely, which is building physical barriers. For instance, breakwaters are commonly used as physical barriers to help reduce/prevent flooding. There are plenty of good recommendations that can help Ethiopia in small but huge ways. However, from the research I've looked into, placing a physical barrier seems that could be more helpful compared to other ideas. Primarily due to floods seeping into their towns causing damage to not only their food sources but their homes. 

I would plan to primarily target the Somali region of Ethiopia. The Somali region consists of 9 divided zones called Shinile, Jijiga, Degehabur, Warder, Korahe, Fik, Gode, Afder, and Liben. However, out of the 9 zones  Afder, Fafan, Liben, and Shabelle zones are affected by flooding and droughts far more than the other zones. It is also found that almost 200,000 people were already affected by either flooding or droughts this year in those areas according to Gada World. This however does not include the damage done to the land, it isn't just the water shortage or floods that affect these people, it's what they cause. It causes them to lose sources of food by their crops either being damaged, which leads to their livestock dying due to lack of food and water. This causes a huge strain on the country, especially on the people living in Afder, Fafan, Liben, and Shabelle zones. Hence why I feel the Somali region of Ethiopia needs to be an area of the target first.

    The best place to live in Ethiopia is typically in well-populated cities but towns as well are great. For example, Addis Ababa, Gondar, Bahir Dar, Harar, Dire Dawa, Awasa, and Dessie were a few places I had looked at when deciding where I would want to live. However, one place stood out to me which was Addis Ababa. Except, it had most recently had a terrible flood, sadly taking 7 lives. This went for the other places I had looked at, making it seem like it was nearly impossible to escape floods in Ethiopia. That was until I looked into Dessie! When researching Dessie it was not only one of the safest places to live in Ethiopia but it has hardly any floods or droughts. It also seems like Dessie is openly working on solving those floods, which makes me feel safe. Despite it being difficult and seemingly impossible to escape floods in Ethiopia, there are still some safe places such as Dessie, but they are hardly heard of. So although my house won't completely avoid floods, knowing that floods hardly happen makes me feel safe as well as the town openly works on it. 

                                                          Thank you for an AMAZING semester!!

    

                                                                            Work Cited

Person, and Dawit Endeshaw. “In Southern Ethiopia, Drought Kills Livestock amid Fears of What Comes Next.” Reuters, 6 Apr. 2023, www.reuters.com/world/africa/southern-ethiopia-drought-kills-livestock-amid-fears-what-comes-next-2023-04-06/#:~:text=Like%20its%20neighbours%20Somalia%20and,head%20off%20a%20humanitarian%20crisis.

“Ethiopia: Disruptions Due to Flooding Ongoing across Central and Southern Regions as of April 5.” Crisis24, 5 Apr. 2023, crisis24.garda.com/alerts/2023/04/ethiopia-disruptions-due-to-flooding-ongoing-across-central-and-southern-regions-as-of-april-5#:~:text=Parts%20of%20the%20Somali%20region,the%20floods%20in%20these%20areas.

“Ethiopia Floods Response.” Humanitarian Coalition, 1 Apr. 2018, www.humanitariancoalition.ca/ethiopia-floods-response#:~:text=More%20than%20165%2C000%20people%20were,the%20risk%20of%20disease%20outbreak.

Vizzuality. “Ethiopia Deforestation Rates & Statistics: GFW.” Global Forest Watch, www.globalforestwatch.org/dashboards/country/ETH. Accessed 17 May 2023.

Richard Davies    Richard Davies is the founder of floodlist.com and reports on flooding news. “Richard Davies.” FloodList, 16 May 1970, floodlist.com/africa/ethiopia-floods-may-2023#:~:text=The%20United%20Nations%20reports%20that%20flooding%20and%20heavy%20rain%20have,least%2029%20people%20have%20died.

“Drought in Ethiopia: 10 Million People in Need | Africa Renewal.” United Nations, www.un.org/africarenewal/news/drought-ethiopia-10-million-people-need. Accessed 17 May 2023.