Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre Internship Program
by Katie Chambers
Ethiopia, June 2017

Katie is a PhD student in Environmental Engineering with a focus on Engineering for Developing Communities. In Ethiopia, Katie will be developing flood inundation maps for communities downstream of hydroelectric dams. These maps will guide the development of Early Warning Early Action frameworks for the Ethiopian Red Cross Society and IFRC. Her environmental engineering research investigates the comparative vulnerabilities and resilience of different types of sanitation systems found in resource-limited communities, as well as the tradeoffs made when prioritizing resilience in system selection.

My first week of fieldwork brought me out of Addis Ababa for the first time this summer. The field site – Koka Dam and its surrounding communities – is located about two hours outside of Addis by car. The landscape outside Addis changes quickly and dramatically from urban to rural, with farms lining the highway as far as the eye can see. It was refreshing to escape the city’s business, and driving through the countryside to Koka Dam was beautiful.

My first day of fieldwork began with an introduction to the Ethiopian Red Cross Society branch office in Adama. I met with the branch officer, Buseri, to plan logistics for the visit and future work. From there we drove to Koka Dam to tour the facilities and meet the dam manager. I thought the visit would just consist of meeting the manager and walking around the dam’s perimeter, but was pleasantly surprised when I received a personal tour of the dam’s inner workings. As large machinery surrounded me and turbines spun loudly, the little engineer inside of me was giddy with excitement at my first visit inside a hydroelectric dam and its control room. The dam has staff working 24/7 to maintain and control the infrastructure, and it was incredible seeing it all come together inside. Even better, the manager was equally as enthusiastic to talk about how the dam infrastructure works as I was able to listen. Luckily, my background in civil and environmental engineering allowed the discussion to progress beyond simply describing how dams work to nitty gritty technical details of daily operations. Following the tour inside the dam, we walked the perimeter of the dam and viewed it from the outside. Seeing the dam in person, as opposed to on the computer, was impressive and helped me better visualize the scope of the project and modelling.

The next day I talked to members from two communities situated around the dam. The initial interviews were with a small group of members, allowing me to scope the project and learn about the interactions between community members, dam staff members, and the infrastructure itself. This baseline information, in conjunction with Red Cross staff and frameworks, will guide the development of the surveys and interview scripts used in subsequent visits with the communities. The first field visit was successful in scoping the project’s extent and setting the stage for future visits, and I’m looking forward to future fieldwork around Koka Dam.

Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre Internship Program
by Katie Chambers
Ethiopia, June 2017

Katie is a PhD student in Environmental Engineering with a focus on Engineering for Developing Communities. In Ethiopia, Katie will be developing flood inundation maps for communities downstream of hydroelectric dams. These maps will guide the development of Early Warning Early Action frameworks for the Ethiopian Red Cross Society and IFRC. Her environmental engineering research investigates the comparative vulnerabilities and resilience of different types of sanitation systems found in resource-limited communities, as well as the tradeoffs made when prioritizing resilience in system selection.

These past couple weeks have been full of meetings that have taken me across Addis Ababa to coordinate the project’s organizational stakeholders, including the Ethiopian Red Cross Society, Ministry of Water, National Meteorological Agency, Netherlands Red Cross, Canadian Red Cross, Awash River Basin Authorities, and (of course) the Climate Centre. Each organization has an interest in my work, ranging from existing projects in the Awash River Basin to using my findings to help develop a countrywide disaster response framework. While this coordination adds to my summer’s workload, knowing that I have the support, encouragement, and interest of so many individuals and organizations has given me the confidence and reassurance that the project will be successful and impactful.

With site visits and community-based research beginning next week, I am making the transition from office to field work. The transition isn’t only a shift in the work I’m performing, but a shift in mentality. A recurrent lesson through all my development classes and fieldwork is the importance of community participation. As engineers and development practitioners, we’re sometimes so focused on solving a problem that we forget to engage with the very people we’re trying to solve the problem for. Case studies have shown that even perfectly designed systems failed when communities were not actively engaged throughout the project process. For example, researchers from CU Boulder found that during the post-disaster shelter reconstruction following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, latrines were installed attached to homes. While the toilets were structurally sound and functional, they went unused due to homeowners’ fears that they would cause bad odors in the house (Jordan, Javernick-Will, & Amadei, 2015).

The flood models developed in the project’s first phase are not the solution to the problem my summer work addresses. Disaster preparedness plans should be informed by bottom-up participatory approaches, with models to guide planning. This allows for a more realistic approach, guided by a community’s identification of priorities and threats. The coming weeks will be busy, filled with fieldwork and the refinement of the flood models. Apologies for the lack of pictures accompanying this blog post, but with fieldwork coming up I’ll be sure to make up for it!

Jordan, E., Javernick-Will, A., and Amadei, B. (2015). Post-disaster reconstruction: lessons from Nagapattinam district, India. Development in Practice, 25(4), 518–534.

Media and Climate Change Observatory (MeCCO)
May 2017 Summary

May 2017 coverage of climate change and global warming increased compared to the previous month, as overall coverage across all sources in twenty-eight countries showed an approximate 10 percent increase compared to April 2017. Coverage of political, scientific, ecological/meteorological, and cultural dimensions of climate change increased most prominently in Africa and Asia, which saw 31 percent and 28 percent increases in coverage, respectively. Europe and North American also saw modest month-to-month increases in coverage, while the Middle East, Oceania, and South America all showed slight decreases compared to the previous month. Europe (142%), Oceania (81%), and Asia (22%) all increased coverage of climate change compared to May 2016. Overall, coverage across all sources in twenty-eight countries decreased approximately 43 percent compared to May 2016

With an overall increase in coverage, political themes in May 2017 continued to focus on the United States’ involvement with the Paris Climate Agreement. The Hindustan Times reported on the uncertainty surrounding the Trump Administration’s decision on whether or not to withdraw from the Agreement and cited the Group of Seven (G7) meeting in Italy as a key date in the overall decision process. Another article in the Manila Bulletin considered the impacts of a U.S withdrawal from the Agreement and described the mounting pressure on the Trump Administration from international leaders to stay the course. Other political coverage focused on the response of international leaders to a U.S. abdication. Indrani Bagchi of The Times of India reported on a renewed partnership between Germany and India, which has helped to reaffirm each countries’ commitment to emissions reductions under the Paris Agreement in the face of a U.S. withdrawal.

Coverage of scientific and ecological dimensions of climate change in May 2017 centered on a number of new reports on carbon emissions. Henry Fountain at The New York Times summarized a recent academic study that details drastic changes to the carbon cycle in Arctic and near-Arctic regions as a result of a warming climate. The new study suggests that due to warming temperatures, these regions are shifting away from a net sink or “storehouse” of carbon to a net source of carbon emissions. Chelsea Harvey at The Washington Post also drew from new analyses by the Climate Action Tracker on the progress China and India have made in meeting their emissions reductions goals under the Paris Climate Agreement. Overall, the two countries are on track to exceed their climate pledges while the current trajectory U.S. emissions reductions lags behind.

The Trump Administration and the Paris Climate Agreement also consumed cultural coverage of climate change in May 2017, continuing an ongoing trend. Alexandra Zavis of the The Los Angeles Times wrote about President Trump’s visit with Pope Francis, who provided the President with a copy of his 2015 encyclical that called for global collective action to address climate change. Another article, this time in the Des Moines Register, summarizes a recent report on activists and law enforcement officials focused on the Dakota Access Pipeline. The report describes how an international security firm targeted protesters opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline with military-style counter-terrorism measures and closely collaborated with law enforcement authorities in five U.S. states.

Figure Caption: Word frequency in climate change and global warming coverage in April 2017 from four Indian newspapers (left) and five US newspapers (right). For India: The Indian Express, The Hindu, the Hindustan Times, and The Times of India. For US: The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times.

– report prepared by Kevin Andrews, Max Boykoff, Gesa Luedecke, Meaghan Daly and Ami Nacu-Schmidt

Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre Internship Program
by Katie Chambers
Ethiopia, June 2017

Katie is a PhD student in Environmental Engineering with a focus on Engineering for Developing Communities. In Ethiopia, Katie will be developing flood inundation maps for communities downstream of hydroelectric dams. These maps will guide the development of Early Warning Early Action frameworks for the Ethiopian Red Cross Society and IFRC. Her environmental engineering research investigates the comparative vulnerabilities and resilience of different types of sanitation systems found in resource-limited communities, as well as the tradeoffs made when prioritizing resilience in system selection.

The sound of distant thunder echoes through my fifth-floor office in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, and the city traffic has come to a standstill as rain saturates the ground below. The rainy season has just started in Ethiopia and will continue until August. Locals warn me to expect rain every day, but that “it is nothing compared to the rain in the United States”. With the rainy season comes hope of a break from the drought that has affected much of East Africa, but also the potential of floods impacting vulnerable communities. My project as an intern with the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre this summer aims to address issues surrounding flooding and consists of two main objectives, to (1) develop inundation models to determine the extent of flooding on downstream communities and (2) develop a forecast-based contingency plan for the Red Cross to link the level of risk with the actions needed to protect communities from floods.

The project specifically looks at the Awash River and flooding downstream of Koka Dam, Ethiopia’s oldest hydroelectric dam, with the potential to expand the project to an additional dam currently in construction.

The first phase of the project consists of flood inundation mapping using HEC-GeoRAS, a software that combines HEC-RAS (a program that models water flow through natural and man-made channels) and ArcGIS (a program for the management, analysis, and display of geographic information).

The results are produced in a geospatial context, which allows users to determine the extent of flooding and predicted impacts to downstream communities. Controlled water releases from Koka Dam and precipitation during rainfall events both contribute to the water flow in the Awash River. Contribution of the dam release and the heavy predication to flooding need to be clarified. These different contributing factors have led to the proposal of three flood modeling scenarios for the Awash River: (1) water release exclusively from Koka Dam, (2) water exclusively from rainfall, and (3) both water release from Koka Dam and rainfall. Read more …