BBC News highlights the conflict building over water in Ethiopia:
Most people in Ethiopia’s lower Omo River Valley continue to exist much as they have done for hundreds of years with virtually no concession to the 21st Century, with one disturbing exception: automatic weapons.
Almost every male carries a Kalashnikov or an M-16 assault rifle, and what might in the past have been a fairly innocuous dispute over grazing or water-rights between different groups, now frequently escalates into bloody warfare.
I increasingly see reports focus on security associated with water, but this one has some choice quotes:
In the village of Kangaten, the Nyangatom’s elder spokesman called Kai shook with rage as he condemned the authorities.
“Let them first bring helicopters to kill us all; then the government can build its dam,” he said.
Another elder bluntly declared: “If the river goes down, there will be war.”
Perhaps the most interesting part of the story is how risks are managed by the people who have lived in connection to the floodwaters.
“It looks very primitive from the outside,” [anthropologist Marco Bassi, of Oxford University] said. “But when you investigate it, you discover that they have a very intimate knowledge of the land and its fertility.
“Each family has maybe seven or eight different varieties of sorghum that responds to different conditions. And combined, the community has 20 or 30.
“They know how to plant in a way that guarantees enough food whatever happens through the year.”
This is a stark contrast to how water risks are managed in America as seen in the recent Red River floods, for example. The Ethiopian government would be wise to leverage the framework used by people living near the water, rather than impose a control system that is prone to unanticipated failures let alone cause an obvious rise in tension and conflict.
