18 June 2024

Urban planning at the heart of increasingly severe East African flood impacts in a warming world

Flooded urban
Image source: Pexels

COPE Director Emmanuel Raju and Global Health Student Nick Baumgart are co-authors of the report titled "Urban planning at the heart of increasingly severe East African flood impacts in a warming world", that first appeared on the World Weather Attribution website, 

From the paper: 

Intense and recurrent extreme weather and climate events in East Africa continue to wreck developmental gains and subject hardship for communities across the region. In 2011, 2016-2017, and 2020-2023, prolonged drought conditions resulted in widespread impacts to humans, including crop and harvest losses, livestock deaths, hunger, and malnutrition. In March-April-May (MAM) 2012, 2016, and 2018 and October-November-December (OND) 2019 and 2023, the region experienced several heavy precipitation events with devastating impacts on agriculture, infrastructure, settlements, property, and life. In March-April 2024, the region experienced devastating flooding causing human deaths, destroying infrastructure and crops, and killing livestock and wildlife.

Some of the main findings include: 

  • Countries in East Africa have been facing disaster after disaster, including prolonged drought between 2020-23, and multiple episodes of torrential rainfall leading to severe flooding. These disasters combine to create a complex humanitarian emergency that includes displacement, infrastructure loss, food insecurity, health risks, disrupted livelihoods, and overall weakened resilience.

  • Rapid urbanisation in cities across East Africa is amplifying flood risks, especially in large informal areas that are located on flood-prone land, lack adequate structural protections from the rains, and whose residents lack resources to recover and rebuild. Land-use changes, including deforestation and conversion to agricultural land are also occurring to different degrees in each of the countries studied, adding to flood risk.

  • Looking at the future, for a climate 2°C warmer than in preindustrial times, models suggest that rainfall intensity and likelihood will increase further. 

  • Taking these findings and the known physical relationship that heavy rainfall is expected to increase in a warming world, we conclude that the observed increase in rainfall in the region over the last 15 years is in part driven by human-induced climate change.

  • While early warning systems in each of the countries exist and warn of extreme rainfall, there is room to expand the action taken based on warnings to adequately protect people from the rainfall impacts. Social protection programs can fill gaps in instances where it’s not possible to avoid all impacts, in order to help people recover their assets and livelihoods after the disaster.

  • Disaster preparedness policies, flood preparedness and protection infrastructure, and early warning systems that are in place across Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi are all steps in the right direction, but must be integrated and implemented at scale in order to reduce impacts
Download the full paper here.

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