Climate risk profile: Ethiopia
This profile provides an overview of climate risks facing Ethiopia, including how climate change will potentially impact agriculture and crop production, livestock, water resources and human health. The
This profile provides an overview of climate risks facing Ethiopia, including how climate change will potentially impact agriculture and crop production, livestock, water resources and human health. The
Xan Rice Nairobi: Ethiopia has appealed for $325 million in aid after drought and crop failure more than doubled the number of people needing emergency assistance to 4.6 million. Poor rains have affected much of southern and south-eastern Ethiopia since last year, significantly cutting harvests. The shortage of local cereals has sent prices soaring, while the cost of imported food has also risen sharply because of the global food crisis and increased fuel prices.
Clutching an intricate bronze cross he used to dig graves during Ethiopia's 1984-1985 famine, priest Alemayu Gede prays drought and high food prices will not make him use it as a shovel again. At the height of the famine that caused more than 1 million deaths and spawned the Band Aid project bringing dozens of top musicians together to raise money, Alemayu helped dig 200 graves a day with the symbol of his faith which he carries everywhere.
Clutching an intricate bronze cross he used to dig graves during Ethiopia's 1984-1985 famine, priest Alemayu Gede prays drought and high food prices will not make him use it as a shovel again. At the height of the famine that caused more than 1 million deaths and spawned the Band Aid project bringing dozens of top musicians together to raise money, Alemayu helped dig 200 graves a day with the symbol of his faith which he carries everywhere.
Rising food prices may derail biofuels policy
Not only is coffee production in Ethiopia significant in economic, social and environmental terms for the country itself
DENILIQUIN, Australia: Lindsay Renwick, the mayor of this dusty southern Australian town, remembers the constant whir of the rice mill. "It was our little heartbeat out there, tickety-tick-tickety," he said, imitating the giant fans that dried the rice, "and now it has stopped." The Deniliquin mill, the largest rice mill in the Southern Hemisphere, once processed enough grain to satisfy the daily needs of 20 million people. But six long years of drought have taken a toll, reducing Australia's rice crop by 98 percent and leading to the mothballing of the mill last December.
Rising food prices could spread social unrest across Africa after triggering riots in Niger, Senegal, Cameroon and Burkina Faso, African ministers and senior agriculture diplomats have warned. Kanayo Nwanze, the vice-president of the United Nations' International Fund for Agriculture, told a conference in Ethiopia that food riots could become a common feature, particularly after the price of rice has doubled in three months. "The social unrest we have seen in places such as Burkina Faso, Senegal or Cameroon may become common in other places in Africa," Mr Nwanze said.
"Telemedicine" links Africans to Indian expertise By Barry Malone ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Troubled by a difficult case, doctor Asfaw Atnafu decides to seek advice. He walks into a consulting room at Black Lion Hospital in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa and greets a doctor at the Care Hospital in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad. Linked by a high-speed Internet connection, the doctors study X-rays and laboratory results.
In 2004, the government of Ethiopia moved 500 people out of the Nech Sar National Park in the south of the country, before handing it over to be managed by the Dutch NGO, African Parks. The following year, African Parks signed another contract to manage the Omo National Park. The issue of evictions in these parks quickly became the subject of intense lobbying by international human rights NGOs.
A child clings to its mother's beads in this file picture of a famine-hit Ethiopian village.