YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon – As COVID-19 cases in Africa tops 1 million, Catholic Relief Services is warning the world not to ignore the drought in East Africa. A severe drought from 2002/2003 lead to a famine affected 13.2 million people. Last year, the UK funded emergency food for three million people. There is also an ongoing outbreak of acute watery diarrhoea in six regions. Emergency contingency funds are available and our European and other allies and the new donor nations must do their share. Contact us, Website design by Treeline Digital
In a report, written with the Ethiopian government, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned of “deepening levels of malnutrition and critical water shortages in the drought-affected areas”. Drought in Ethiopia. In addition the PSNP suspended infrastructure requirements in some areas due to the drought conditions. The existing Open Comments threads will continue to exist for those who do not subscribe to Independent Premium. Russia's Catholic Church warns against proposed curbs on clergy, Australian academic Rowland wins prestigious Ratzinger Prize for theology, Tomb of young Italian tech whiz opened for veneration, People have right to know how Vatican uses resources, official says, Report finds flaws in Catholic Church abuse-prevention plans, NY diocese files for bankruptcy amid clergy abuse lawsuits, Pompeo meets with Vatican after US-China tensions spill over, Cardinal Dolan says 'best candidate' Barrett face 3 biases: 'Woman, mother and Catholic', Trump plans to slash refugee admissions to US to record low, Post-pandemic world must not return to selfish 'normality,' pope says, Cardinal Pell returns to Rome as Vatican finances face scrutiny, On China, Vatican and US risk flawed assumptions about each other, DeSales Media Group in the Diocese of Brooklyn. The worst famine to hit the country in a century, it left 1.2 million dead. But a significant food crisis could be all it takes for Ethiopia to fall into an economic and political tailspin. The continuous cutting of trees and removal of crop residues has exposed watersheds to erosion and land degradation. The EC-Earth model analysis indicates a non-significant drying trend, with a risk ratio between now and 1960 of 1.4 (0.9-1.9 according to the 95% confidence interval). Catholic Standard
Subsequent food shortages are putting millions of Ethiopians at risk of malnutrition, while poor access to water is leading to hygiene and sanitation issues - a grave threat to public health. construction of soil and stone terracing/bunds and micro-basins), – Building check dams/gabions and rehabilitating gullies to manage flooding, – Strategic multi-purpose tree planting and agroforestry, – The establishment of area enclosures and enrichment plantations in degraded watershed areas to aid in the regeneration of the watershed and range lands. They studied the more reliable data from 1960 – 2015, focusing on the months of February through September during which almost all rain falls. The Belg season shows no significant change in likelihood of such drought events due to human-caused climate change nor SSTs. Restrictions on press freedom, including the imprisonment of bloggers, has chilled the media. In July, there were 376,000 severely malnourished children under five and 3.6 million moderately malnourished children and women who were either pregnant or breastfeeding a child. As much as 75% of harvests have been lost, and water shortages have claimed the lives of as many as 1 million livestock in the affected central and northeastern parts of the country. CRS is the official overseas development agency of the U.S. bishops’ conference. Luckily, we now have tools that forecast many impending crises. The famines in Ethiopia occurred periodically through the history of Ethiopia due to a number … Heatwaves can be particularly dangerous to humans, and occur all over the world with increasing intensity. The country also experiences recurrent drought. In the past, overgrazing and the increased need for farmland for cultivation and for grazing led farmers to expand to mountainous and hilly areas which normally should not be used for cultivation. What factors drive these two interconnected environmental problems? Witness Ethiopia’s own past, or Sudan, or the recent experience in Syria, where a prolonged drought led to urban migration and protests that catalyzed into an organized opposition and eventual civil war. A widespread famine affected Ethiopia from 1983 to 1985. Ethiopia continues to reject several fundamental issues in the ongoing Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) negotiations, including the provisions that refelect the legally binding nature of the agreement, said the Egyptian Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources on Saturday. This can also lead to migration when the conditions are severe. With funding from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), we are providing help to 17,000 vulnerable households in Ethiopia's Oromia region. Significant growth in the agriculture sector was in fact a key factor in reducing, by one-third, the share of Ethiopians living in poverty between 2000 and 2010. Yet these days, everyone is in the same condition and does neither have the ability nor the will to help and share anything. And despite the impressive work by the U.S.-supported Productive Safety Net Program, which has helped make millions more resilient to shocks, about a third of the country still lives in poverty, and many more people are one crisis away from destitution. Most of these are farming families scratching out a living on small, rain-fed plots of land. Ana, Manila, The Philippines, Lola (Grandma) Rosita, 76, Malabon City, The Philippines, Anatole Bandu, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ageing in the 21st Century: Executive Summary, Ageing in the 21st Century: Preface by Ban Ki-moon, Ageing in the 21st Century: Foreword by Babatunde Osotimehin, Ageing in the 21st Century: Chapter 1: Setting the scene, Ageing in the 21st Century: Chapter 2: A fresh look at evidence, Ageing in the 21st Century: Chapter 3: A review of progress, Ageing in the 21st Century: Chapter 4: The voices of older persons, Ageing in the 21st Century: Chapter 5: Findings, Ageing in the 21st Century: Ten priority actions to maximise the opportunity of ageing populations, Helping Older People in Emergencies (HOPE), Missing millions: Infographic on how older people with disabilities are excluded from humanitarian response. Signs of trouble began to surface early in the year. Whilst these model results are statistically compatible with gridded observations (due to the large spread of possible trends from gridded observations ranging from a factor five decrease to a factor 10 increase in likelihood), they are not compatible with each other, which implies that the differences are not only due to natural variability but also due to model spread, which has been taken into account in the final uncertainty range. Specifically, the clearing of forests, highlands and shrub lands for sedentary agriculture has altered the natural environment, impacted water systems, degraded watersheds, resulted in the loss of vegetation cover and led to severe soil erosion. Weather@home, an atmosphere-only general circulation model, provided weather simulations under observed climate conditions (sea-surface temperatures and sea-ice conditions) as well as simulations without human-induced climate change. With my goats, I feel needed and like a contributor to my household in my old age. This disparity with the gridded CenTrends dataset is due to a few possible reasons, including scarcity of station data, differing characteristics of point data versus area averaged data and small scale variability within the study area. About two million animals have died in the Somali region alone, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). It allows our most engaged readers to debate the big issues, share their own experiences, discuss real-world solutions, and more. The magnitude of the devastation to Ethiopia led the UN’s Allahoury Diallo to declare that the “drought is not just a food crisis – it is, above all, a livelihood crisis.”. In addition, in collaboration with longstanding development partners, the Ethiopian government has also implemented the PSNP since 2005. Analysis of the CMIP5 ensemble indicated a return period of the drought of about 30 years, with no difference in frequency from pre-industrial times. Scientists with World Weather Attribution used multiple methods of attribution science to look at the possible roles climate change and El Niño played in the drought. People commonly use trees for firewood and construction materials. On 11 June, the ministers of water resources and irrigation from the three countries held a virtual meeting at Sudan’s request. The story is more complex when it comes to the role of human-induced climate change in the 2015 extreme drought. The report warned a total of more than 1.5 million people were expected to be affected by flooding this summer with 500,000 likely to be forced to leave their homes. Scientists with World Weather Attribution used multiple methods of attribution science to look at the possible roles climate change and El Niño played in the drought. In the communities where this work has been carried out, we have observed that the volume of water reaching downstream catchments has increased and groundwater levels have also risen. For the observational data and EC-Earth model, this is explored by fitting the precipitation data to a Gaussian distribution and allowing the Gaussian fit parameters to be a function of the low-pass filtered (smoothed) global mean surface temperature (GMST), scaling the probability distribution function (PDF) up or down with GMST to represent the climate of 1960 and 2015. “It is in all our interests to act in order to secure stability, peace, security and prosperity in this part of Africa.”, A child carrying a bag in a displaced persons camp due to Ethiopia's drought in Wender on 9 June 2017. The renaissance dam is critical to expand energy sources across the country. FEWS NET, Crisis (IPC Phase 3) expected in parts of Oromia, SNNPR, and southern pastoral areas. In 2016, many parts of the central and northern Ethiopia were reported to be in IPC Phase 3 of food insecurity – the ‘acute crisis’ phase (FEWS, 2017). If you live in the UK, you can donate via Age International. Want an ad-free experience?Subscribe to Independent Premium. The observed 2015 drought was an extremely rare event that is expected to happen in the central to northeastern parts of Ethiopia only around once every few hundred years (best estimate 260 years, lowest estimate of 60 years, according to the 95% confidence interval, based on the gridded CenTrends data set extended with CHIRPS, mainly satellite data in 2015) in the current climate. Older people are left isolated and in need, causing great emotional distress. They found that El Niño made this rare drought even drier in the Kiremt season. Please be respectful when making a comment and adhere to our Community Guidelines. “A deadly mix of severe malnutrition coupled with acute watery diarrhoea puts thousands of lives at risk, particularly the elderly and children,” he said. El Niño enhanced the drought, making a rare event (1 in 80 years) even more rare (1 in several hundred years), according to correlations in the observations. During the meeting, however, the Ethiopian representative suggested the new document. Ethiopia drought, 2015 – a livelihood crisis, El Niño in Ethiopia, 2015-2016 – a real-time review of impacts and responses. What specifically have you been doing?