Caught Between Extremes: Understanding Human-Water Interactions During Drought-To-Flood Events in the Horn of Africa

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Disaster risks are the results of complex spatiotemporal interactions between risk components, impacts and societal response. The complexities of these interactions increase when multi-risk events occur in vulnerable contexts characterized by ethnic conflicts, unstable governments, and high levels of poverty, resulting in impacts that are larger than anticipated. Yet, only few multi-risk studies explore human-environment interactions, as most studies are hazard-focused, consider only a single-type of multi-risk interaction, and rarely account for spatiotemporal dynamics of risk components. Here, we developed a step-wise, bottom-up approach, in which a range of qualitative and semi-quantitative methods was used iteratively to reconstruct interactions and feedback loops between risk components and impacts of consecutive drought-to-flood events, and explore their spatiotemporal variations. Within this approach, we conceptualize disaster risk as a set of multiple (societal and physical) events interacting and evolving across space and time. The approach was applied to the 2017–2018 humanitarian crises in Kenya and Ethiopia, where extensive flooding followed a severe drought lasting 18–24 months. The events were also accompanied by government elections, crop pest outbreaks and ethnic conflicts. Results show that (a) the highly vulnerable Kenyan and Ethiopian contexts further aggravated drought and flood impacts; (b) heavy rainfall after drought led to both an increase and decrease of the drought impacts dependent on topographic and socio-economic conditions; (c) societal response to one hazard may influence risk components of opposite hazards. A better understanding of the human-water interactions that characterize multi-risk events can support the development of effective monitoring systems and response strategies.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere2022EF002747
Pages (from-to)1-20
Number of pages20
JournalEarth's Future
Volume10
Issue number9
Early online date2 Sept 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the PerfectSTORM ERC grant project (number: ERC-2020-StG-948601, granted to AFVL). PJW and MCdR received support from the MYRIAD-EU project, which received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101003276.

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the PerfectSTORM ERC grant project (number: ERC‐2020‐StG‐948601, granted to AFVL). PJW and MCdR received support from the MYRIAD‐EU project, which received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101003276.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors. Earth's Future published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Geophysical Union.

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