Ethiopia Water Crisis Abstract

The lack of sanitized drinking water in Ethiopia is a massive issue that needs to be managed through a more efficient system than what is being used now. Ethiopia is at the forefront of the world’s water crisis. When it comes down to what countries have the most freshwater available, Ethiopia is somewhere towards the bottom of the pack. It’s because of poor management of water, which forces women and children to walk miles upon miles everyday just to collect water filled with diseases and waste from both animals and humans. Unfortunately, these people don’t have the choice to drink sanitized water like most others.
Ethiopia has always had a problem with water scarcity because of many reasons such as population growth and being in a drought for the past couple of decades. Yet the issue of water there is only now being considered a crisis. There are many factors now that have caused the water crisis to get increasingly worse. One reason is that Ethiopia has been going through a drought for the last several years. This means no rain water is falling for them to collect and use for not only themselves, but their farms and crops. Another is population growth, because Ethiopia population is starting to double. This means that there will not be enough water to sustain more people because there is hardly enough to sustain the amount of people in Ethiopia already. It is estimated that the world will run out of water by 2050, even for developed countries. So that means that Ethiopia, one of the many developing countries around the world, will most likely run out of water sooner. That’s why they urgently need to start coming up with ways to efficiently use the fresh water available to them.
According to a study in 2000, Ethiopia used approximately 86% of their fresh water drawn from rivers, lakes, and underground aquifers on agriculture. This fact shows that one of the greatest ways to conserve water in Ethiopia is increasing irrigation efficiencies. Most irrigation systems around the world waste water. Typically, only between 35% and 50% of water withdrawn for irrigated agriculture ever reaches the crops because most is wasted. Ethiopia can start fixing crisis by using more efficient systems such as the drip or LEPA systems. The drip system is a network of pipes, installed either above the surface or underground, with punctures/holes that transports freshwater straight to the roots of their crops. The LEPA system is different than most systems that only spew water into the air because crops are delivered water from drop tubes that attached to the sprinklers extensions. If money is a huge setback in Ethiopia, conservation projects for farmers are a good way to construct small reservoirs that collect and store water to use in the dry season. All of these are systems that can be the solution to helping Ethiopia stop or at least slow down the water crisis until better, more efficient systems are put in place. But if action is not taken immediately, children and adults will continue to die without access to more sanitized water.