Water emergency in drought-hit areas

If October rains are as poor as the seasonal Gu rains earlier in the year, conditions will become critical in the Ethiopian Somali region, Somalia, northwestern Eritrea and northern Kenya, the UNDP Emergencies Unit in Ethiopia (EUE) warned in its August-September humanitarian update. Emergency water needs in Warder, Degeh Bur, Gode, Afder and Liben zones in southeastern Ethiopia were an ongoing concern for humanitarian agencies, the report said. The local administration had detailed exhaustion of shallow wells and birkas (reservoirs) in many of the areas, and decreasing borehole productivity.

Although some rain had been reported in the last few weeks, "it remains to be seen whether these rains will be sufficient to relieve pressure on pastoralists in areas still recovering from the 1999-2000 drought", EUE said. It pointed out that demands on increasingly scarce water sources had been exacerbated by "an influx of drought migrants from affected areas of north-central Somalia, who are coming with their livestock". The regional office of the Ethiopian Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission said 16 districts were "severely affected", including all four districts of Warder Zone, eastern parts of Korahe Zone, Harshin District of Jijiga Zone, Garbo and Jamero districts in Fik Zone, Filtu, Moyale and Hay Suftu districts in Liben Zone, and parts of Afder Zone.

In some of the affected areas, people rely on emergency water tankering - "large numbers of drought displaced are dependent on single sources of water, trucked from over 10 km distance". Recent climate outlooks for Ethiopia show probabilities for below-normal rainfall over southern Ethiopia for the period September-December 2001.