Bundada Internally Displaced People (IDP) community is one of the many internally displaced people settlement center for people due to severe drought and flooding in Ethiopia. The community is located in the Southeast Somali region of Ethiopia.
In the Somali Region, as in other pastoral areas, livestock is an essential means of survival for most people and is key to generating income in local markets. These communities have developed an adaptation technique to live with scarce water resources for many years.
One of the adaptation techniques used by the pastoralist communities in the region is rainwater harvesting. Rainwater is collected on water pans, as demonstrated here. The harvested rainwater is used as a water source mainly for animals and washing clothes, but in the worst cases, as a source of drinking water. In the last decade, the region has been experiencing recurrent drought and severe flood events (Tekalign, 2017). These adverse effects of climate change and variability in the past few years have exposed the communities' vulnerability to the point of forcing them to change their livelihood and place of residence.
In the Bundad internally displaced people center, there are about 200 families who left their place of residence because of severe flood and drought events that destroyed their livelihood. It has been 5 to 6 years for most families since they moved to this center. In their original residence, most families owned 200–500 livestock and practiced an argopastoral lifestyle. The Bundad IDP camp also has a host community with an iron sheet house structure. Both communities (host and IDP) completely depend on aid and government assistance to get clean drinking water and food supplies. The government provides them with clean drinking water to fill these 60-liter barrels once a week. The water isn’t enough to cater for their needs; therefore, they are forced to travel for kilometers to fetch water from the nearest water pan or buy water from another community with a water source. This responsibility mainly falls on women and young girls.
As you can see in the video, they build traditional houses mainly from stick/log, plastic, and clothing materials. These houses can’t sustain extreme climate events such as floods and heavy rain. The climate conditions in this area aren’t naturally suitable for farming, but some families are trying. In their previous place of residence, severe drought killed their livestock and led to poverty, while the flood event destroyed their crops and property, leading to sickness and malnutrition. Close to the camp, there was a heavy flood that started two days ago. The flood destroyed the main road connecting them to the next town and eroded all the soil away. In the summer, this kind of flood is not dangerous for them, as you can see them walking through it bravely. This location is an economically and also physically water-scarce area (Tekalign, 2017), but the communities are grateful to be living here as it allows their children to have access to education. In their previous residence, this wasn’t an option. Even though their place of residence is located in an arid area, the rainy season is accompanied by heavy floods that are threatening their residence again.
These communities lack the knowledge and infrastructure to reuse rainwater for growing crops or as a protected water source. The soil in the area could also be used for crop production, but the lack of any erosion prevention means and the overgrowth of competing thorny trees are critical challenges. Drought and flooding are becoming recurrent events in the region, leaving the communities more vulnerable and without the capacity to prepare for them. These able communities are forced to be humanitarian aid dependent while a large amount of rainwater or runoff that can be harnessed destroys their surroundings.
If we construct the necessary infrastructure, provide them with the capacity to adapt to the changing hydroclimatic conditions, and develop an efficient strategic and implementation plan, do we dare say they live in a water-scarce area or lack an adequate water governance and management system?
a project pointing the way forward in the global debate about water governance.
