Climate Change Impacts in Ethiopia

     According to the 2007 IPCC report there is a likely chance that the Eastern portion of the African continent will not only be experiencing increased heat, but also an increase of rainfall.  Which for Ethiopia could be seen as a blessing and a curse.  They do have times of drought, so increase in rainfall could help this area with their agricultural industry.  However, Ethiopia also has problems with flooding due to soil erosion caused by deforestation.  They have been very active in replanting their forests so maybe flooding would not be as big of an issue for the area.  Plus Ethiopia has many different types of geographic landscapes that would react differently with increased rainfall.

Temperature increase for Eastern Africa from 2007 IPCC report

     The IPCC report does state in the following paragraph that there are many systematic problems with the MMD modeling.  This in itself could create many different climate change scenarios that cannot be accurately predicted.

     As a whole the African continent will have many issues adapting to climate change.  It is predicted that 75 million to 250 million people will be affected by water stress related issues by the year 2020.  Due to the lack of adaptability this continent because of economic stress the water scarcity they could face will be a major hurdle.

    The Executive Summary of the IPCC has many possible scenarios that are being described as having a high to very high confidence level of occurring.  Again it is thought that due to the economic issues the continent has adaptability to climate change will be hindered.   Agricultural production and security will be a challenge for many African countries.  Water stress will become worse for those countries already facing water scarcity issues and those countries currently not having water stress issues will begin to have water scarcity issues.  That is considered to have a "very high confidence" of occurring.  Coastal cities could be affected by sea-rise.  There is also the concern of climate caused diseases, such as malaria.
     In the article by Gene J.-Y You and Claudia Ringler "Climate Change Impacts in Ethiopia: Hydro-Economic Modeling Projections," from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) website, the thought is that without proper irrigation policy and procedure in Ethiopia, the increased water gains may not translate to a much higher GDP in the agriculture industry.  This is due to the lack of infrastructure and the high risk of flooding in the country.  The flooding may be caused by, according to this report, the increase of rainfall that would have inconsistent variability.  Without proper water storage and irrigation that increase would be lost.
     It appears that many of Ethiopia's challenges due to climate change will be in relation to economic and infrastructure deficiencies.  If Ethiopia could work toward improving their agricultural and water systems, possibly climate change will not be, in the short term, as harsh as other areas of the world.