Ethiopia’s economy and the well-being of its people varies, in part, with the climate. Natural climate variability and long-term climate trends both contribute to fluctuations in weather that affect operations in water resources, agriculture, energy, health and more. Periodic droughts continue to cause hunger. Rising temperatures are exposing more people to malaria.
But our ability to monitor and predict climate also provides an opportunity to anticipate and manage such risks. A recent workshop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, brought together experts from government and academic institutions to discuss how to improve the development and delivery of climate services in the country. Representatives from Columbia’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) and the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Framework for Climate Services also attended.
The workshop was an initial step in creating a National Framework for Climate Services — a coordinating mechanism to improve risk management by incorporating science-based climate information into decision and policy making.
IRI’s Adapting Agriculture to Climate Today, for Tomorrow (ACToday) project, funded by the Columbia World Projects, will contribute to this framework as well as help Ethiopia achieve the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goal #2 to end hunger.
To read more about this effort and how IRI is contributing, click here.
