An ongoing war between the Ethiopian government and its allies against Tigray, one of its northern states, has led to one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises.
We have used satellite data to track how the conflict and resulting energy crisis has also broken the relationship between humans and nature. People have been forced to use firewood, causing a loss of vegetation in a region on the forefront of environmental rehabilitation. That’s the key finding of our new report published by the Conflict and Environment Observatory.
Tigray is semi-arid, and people there, like most of Ethiopia’s population, depend on subsistence agriculture fed by rainfall for a large part of their diet. When cropping is disrupted by insufficient rainfall or other causes, alternative sources of income or food are also often insufficient, contributing to catastrophic famines, such as in the 1980s.
*The views of the above article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Africa Speaks 4 Africa or its editorial team.