| Sumario: | The Awash Basin in Ethiopia experiences frequent flooding, sometimes with devastating consequences. Climate change is now creating new flood regimes in different parts of the basin and reshaping the interaction of flooding with rapidly changing communities. This is causing heightened risk, particularly for the most vulnerable communities across the basin, and requires new forms of management and response.
This study explores the physical changes in rainfall and landscapes leading to major flood events and examines the interaction of physical phenomena with societal and economic dynamics across the basin’s upper, middle, and lower reaches. The study’s multi-dimensional perspective includes analysis of hydroclimatic variables at the basin level including global drivers, flood characterization in selected catchments, and understanding of affected communities at sub-catchment levels. Selected catchments cover urban parts of the Awash, as well as agricultural, pastoral, and agro-pastoral areas. The major focus of the work was the recent extreme wet season in 2020 and associated flooding during which an estimated, 144,000 were displaced and 60,000 hectares were inundated. This was the most serious flood event in the basin since 1996.
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