NAIROBI - Going into the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) Summit, the Horn of Africa is experiencing multiple meteorological disasters, including a catastrophic drought in the east and record floods in the west.
El Nino flooding since early November has resulted in fatalities, property destruction, and a growing humanitarian crisis in the region.
This further reminds world leaders of what is at stake, particularly in Africa, a continent that contributes the least greenhouse gas emissions. The region's torrential rains impacted mostly Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia. But South Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania are also on the radar, prompting a large-scale humanitarian response.
Floods and excessive rains have aggravated Somalia's famine problem...The hardest-hit parts of Ethiopia are Tigray and Amhara, two regions still trying to recover from the negative impacts of the two-year civil war that ended in November 2022.
In recent years, South Sudan has become the case study for climate-related stresses such as record-breaking droughts, floods, and extreme heat – the major driver of internal displacement in the global south.
