Maereg Tafere

The Environmental Impacts of Disasters and Armed Conflicts in East Africa Region Maereg Tafere

This book about the disaster-conflict-environment nexus is based on empirical evidence gathered from the region of East Africa, where a series of combinations of natural disasters and armed conflict have devastated not only the political economy, but also the physical environment. Each of the chapters are self-contained research outcomes describing the core problems faced by typical subsistence farming communities and forcibly-displaced persons-- that is, refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)-in five East African countries that have been living under recurring major disasters and conflicts.
The book describes the role of the disaster-conflict interaction on land cover removal; how the socio-economic standing of communities in the five nations was shaped by the crises; the community's perceptions of climate change and their capacity to adapt to extreme disruptions. The final section presents a review of current environmental care practices in international aid and a set of proposed field processes and tools that can be used to mitigate environmental degradation. This section first defines potential environmental damage likely to be caused by various natural hazards, as well as those that can emerge in the process of emergency relief, recovery, or developmental efforts. Finally, it presents practical guidelines on how to entrench environmental factors in international aid programs.