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The case of Ethiopian Farmers [climate Change]

by Merry Firdissa | 14-03-2019 21:47



One of the main reasons abnormal climates came to be a common scenario all across the globe is due to improper waste management. By waste, I mean all kinds of waste but especially green house gases. In Ethiopia, the majority of the population engages in farming activities to make ends meet.  And so much of the farming society in Ethiopia still depends on traditional methods to meet their day to day needs. For example, their means of cooking is fire instead of modern cooking utilities and the water they use for drinking comes from springs and rivers. This being their daily activity, the raw material they depend on is nature. They use woods from trees and water from nature but do not replace what they¡¯ve consumed and that means depletion which in turn has its own bad consequences along with acting as a catalyst for abnormal climate.

It seemed I suppose that the inhabitants thought that the environment is only a giver, a neutral ground since it has sustained humans for billions of years. But it can only take it for so long, it has now been awoken and  does fight back. In fact, it is a time bomb and all that we are doing to undo is doing more. The rural society and the rest of Ethiopia realized that the environment is a force to be reckoned with after they saw its bad consequences.
The increase in abnormal rainfall for example caused a scare for the farming society because to farmers, rainfall is a very serious thing. It can be called their planner. It is the calendar they use to do everything. If there are schedules, Google calendars or simply put phones for students, there are rainfalls for farmers, it is the same kind of dependence. Abnormal rainfall means improper growth of crops and plantations which in turn means improper harvest which means low product quality and quantity which eventually means bankruptcy.  This gets its way into the economy and affects it negatively especially in Ethiopia because the country is an agriculture based economy. This is a big loss for a country because the harvests usually are once a year and losing a year¡¯s harvest means lagging behind for a year and that is a loss no country wants to suffer so now the government has taken environmental conservation into effect and is doing well.

The first step toward resolving this issue is first accepting that the problem does exist. Most people even now today do not consider this issue real, they debate that it is a tactic to get attention. This is a misunderstanding just like that of a child exposed to fire for the first time. It might look alluring and so the child would touch to see and learn its nature. It would not matter if the child were lectured over and over about what fire is, the child would debate back that it is not dangerous at all, it¡¯s color is even orange. Only the experience of touching it is what makes a child understand fire. But we are no children, we humans have been here for long, but we still need an environmental committee coming each week to lecture us on it, and this is wrong.

 The Ethiopian government has taken the step of acknowledging the problem and is working on the next step. Many projects have been and still are getting undertaken to improve this issue. Ethiopia is now active in projects of tree conservation and plantation, soil conservation and waste management and so many other conservation projects. But it is hard to undo than it is to do. The goal this country is moving with is to at least equalize if we cannot return to original.  There needs to be equilibrium between what is consumed and what is added in its place.