Climate Change

Global climate is already warming at a rate unprecedented in the past 1000 years and is therefore inevitably altering the character of local and regional weather around the world. Societal vulnerability to the risks associated with climate change may exacerbate ongoing social and economic challenges, particularly in the poorest regions of our planet, even stronger in Africa, where agriculture is truly important for the daily subsistence. This is due to their low adaptive capacity and high sensitivity of their socio-economic systems to climate variability and change. This indicates that the people who will be exposed to the worst of the impacts are the ones least able to cope with the associated risks. A recent mapping on vulnerability and poverty in Africa also categorizes Ethiopia in to the group of most vulnerable countries to climate change. It is, thus, imperative to understand the actual dynamics of climate change effect at the lowest levels of the society, such as households, communities and districts.