{"id":284763,"date":"2019-08-22T07:22:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-22T11:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.google.com\/articles\/CAIiEMN8vHUXZ9OqL4MZ0WqSQoAqGQgEKhAIACoHCAownPqBCzCkqv4CMOHI8QU?oc=5"},"modified":"2026-10-21T11:33:42","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T15:33:42","slug":"awash-basin-climate-change-water-stress-reach-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/284763","title":{"rendered":"Oxford researchers projected a hotter, drier and more water-stressed future for Ethiopia\u2019s Awash River basin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ethiopia\u2019s Awash River basin will become hotter, drier and more water stressed until at least the end of the century, researchers with the University of Oxford-led REACH programme wrote in August 2019.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/figure>\n

The Awash River at Sodere, Ethiopia, photographed on July 5, 2014. (mjr74 \/ Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0) [file photo]<\/em><\/p>\n

Meron Teferi Taye and Ellen Dyer set out the findings in The Conversation. REACH, a global research programme on water security for the poor, had studied the basin since 2015, they wrote.<\/p>\n

The Awash basin covers about 10 percent of Ethiopia\u2019s land and is home to 17 percent of its population, including the capital, Addis Ababa, according to the authors. Most climate studies in Ethiopia focus on the Nile basin, and their projections often disagree because they use different models, so the team used the climate models that best represented the Awash region.<\/p>\n

Almost all of Ethiopia\u2019s food crops and most of its industrial crops are rain-fed, and industrial crops alone account for 85 percent of export earnings, the researchers wrote. Hydropower supplies about 90 percent of the country\u2019s electricity.<\/p>\n

A 5 percent drop in rainfall could cut agricultural productivity by 10 percent and reduce the basin\u2019s GDP by 5 percent, they wrote. The basin already suffers frequent floods and droughts, and water is scarce downstream but relatively plentiful in the highlands.<\/p>\n

The steepest declines were projected for April to June, the peak irrigation season for both smallholders and large irrigators. Less water could set hydropower against irrigation and make drinking water and sanitation harder to secure for poor communities downstream, the authors said.<\/p>\n

They called for wider access to climate information and training for government staff, sustainable development of other water sources such as groundwater, and attention to the poorest people in the basin.<\/p>\n

The article noted that Ethiopians planted 350 million trees in a single day in July 2019 under the Green Legacy initiative, which aims to grow 4 billion trees. The authors wrote that, for a country likely to be hotter, drier and more water stressed, climate-resilient policies need to be grounded in robust science.<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/strong> The Conversation: Meron Teferi Taye and Ellen Dyer, \u201cEthiopia\u2019s future is tied to water \u2013 a vital yet threatened resource in a changing climate\u201d (Aug. 2019)<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ethiopia\u2019s Awash River basin will become hotter, drier and more water stressed until at least the end of the century, researchers with the University of Oxford-led REACH programme wrote in August 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":838061,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/awash-river-sodere-ethiopia-2014.jpg?fit=1280%2C960&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-1c4X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284763"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":838066,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284763\/revisions\/838066"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/838061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}