Your search found 2 records
1 Payet, R.; Obura, D. 2004. The negative impacts of human activities in the Eastern African region: an international waters perspective. Ambio, 33(1-2):24-33.
International waters ; Social aspects ; Human behaviour ; Ecosystems ; Assessment ; Coral reefs ; Case studies ; Sustainable development ; River basins ; Water policy ; Wastes ; Pollution ; Freshwater ; Climate change / East Africa / Somali
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: P 8100 Record No: H044760)
(2.04 MB)
The complex interactions between human activities and the environment at the interface of land and water is analyzed with a focus on the Somali Current (East Africa), and Indian Ocean Island States, subregions of the Global International Waters Assessment (GIWA). These 2 subregions contain some of the world's richest ecosystems, including the high biodiversity forests of Madagascar and the diverse coastal habitats of the eastern African coast. These ecosystems support local communities and national and regional economies. Current and future degradation of these systems, from water basins to continental shelves, affects the livelihoods and sustainability of the countries in the region, and long-term efforts to reduce poverty. The assessments determined that pollution and climate change are the primary environmental and social concerns in the Islands of the Indian Ocean, while freshwater shortage and unsustainable exploitation of fisheries and other living resources are the primary environmental and social concerns in East Africa. The GIWA approach, through assessing root causes of environmental concerns, enables the development of policy approaches for mitigating environmental degradation. This paper explores policy frameworks for mitigating the impacts, and reducing the drivers, of 3 environmental concerns—freshwater shortage; solid waste pollution; and climate change—addressing social and institutional causes and effects, and linking the subregions to broad international frameworks. The common theme in all 3 case studies is the need to develop integrated ecosystem and international waters policies, and mechanisms to manage conflicting interests and to limit threats to natural processes.
2 Geremew, A.; Nijhawan, A.; Mengistie, B.; Mekbib, D.; Flint, A.; Howard, G. 2024. Climate resilience of small-town water utilities in eastern Ethiopia. PLOS Water, 3(5):e0000158. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pwat.0000158]
Climate resilience ; Water supply ; Climate change ; Risk management ; Government ; Sustainability ; Towns ; Sanitation ; Indicators ; Households ; Data collection ; Water quality ; Infrastructure / Ethiopia / Hararghe / Oromia / Fafen / Somali
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H052794)
https://journals.plos.org/water/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pwat.0000158&type=printable
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H052794.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H052794.pdf
(0.62 MB) (636 KB)
Climate change threatens the safety of water supplies globally, but small water supplies in rapidly growing and urbanizing towns in low- and middle-income countries are especially at risk. Despite the efforts of the Government of Ethiopia, research shows that that small-town water utilities in Ethiopia are poorly equipped to prioritize developing and maintaining climate-resilient water services. We applied the How tough is WASH framework for climate resilient water supplies to ten town water utilities in Eastern Ethiopia to identify their strengths and weaknesses in preparing for climate change. We found reports of weak institutional support from service authorities and exclusion of climate risk management from trainings, which cascades down to service providers in the form of lack of emergency response, inadequate staffing and financial mismanagement. This is consistent with previous studies on sustainability of town water utilities, and highlights the applicability of this tool into existing monitoring frameworks that have been proposed for town water utilities in Ethiopia. We also modified the How tough is WASH framework to capture these findings and better reflect the complexity of a utility-managed piped water supply.
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