Project Brief : Ethiopia

Climate changes and the limited availability of climate information pose significant challenges for managing, planning and responding to severe weather events in Ethiopia. A combination of insufficient observational infrastructure (e.g. automatic weather stations and hydrology gauging stations) and a low capacity to analyse and model the weather, climate and environment, leads to inadequate information being available to support climate-related decision making. This weak observational and analytical capability compounds the difficulty to foresee and manage extreme weather events, and to plan to mitigate the long-term impacts of climate change on society and the economy.

Climate change is of critical importance to Ethiopia.  Its economy remains reliant on climate sensitive agriculture and rainfall (42% of GDP emanates from and 85% of employment is in the agriculture sector), as well as natural resource dependent energy (biomass and hydropower).  Recent assessments have estimated that economic growth could be hit by up to 2.5% per year unless measures are taken to build capacity to adapt to the opportunities and constraints changes in climate may bring (World Bank 2008). Climate Change is also expected to increase the fraction of people living in poverty, in turn increasing income inequality (Mideksa 2010), which is likely to decrease economic growth and fuel poverty.

For full report, please click download below.