Ethiopia: Cushioning the Drought’s Impact

The climatic situation has its own impact on the weather variability.
Climate variability is caused both by nature and human activities.
Thirty years ago, climate variability was a phenomena which occurs with a decade-long interval but nowadays it has been a common phenomena to face drought every two years.
At that time, due to lack of coping mechanisms, humans as well as animals used to lose their lives.
In 1985, during the Derg era, though institutionally the Aid Coordinating and Rehabilitation Commission was established in the northern part of the country, one million breathed their last helplessly due to drought.
Currently, in the Horn of Africa, due to drought more than 25 million people are at the verge of lapsing into famine.
Because of this unfolding, they pay less attention to the drought-thorn East African countries.
Their way of life is dominated by pastoral activities and when extreme weather conditions occurs humans and animals face risk.
The scarcity of water turns grazing land into barren ones and the non availability of food-stock and water leave animals to be physically weak and lose their life.
Recently, the government has announced that due to the hungover effect of El Nino and the absence of spring shower, drought has hit the eastern and south-eastern part of the country where particularly the pastoral community dwells and nearly 230 representatives from the Government, UN, NGOs and donors have visited affected communities and the assessment concluded that some 5.6 million people were in need of aid in 2017GC.