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Research partnership to improve drought resilience in East Africa receives funding boost

Drought threatens lives and livelihoods in East Africa. Colin Crowley/Save the Children

Press release issued: 1 May 2019

An international research partnership, led by the University of Bristol, is one of 15 awarded a total of £7million from the UK Government-funded Challenge-led Grants to help address resilience challenges facing developing countries

Dr Katerina Michaelides from the University’s School of Geographical Sciences is working with colleagues from the University of Nairobi and Addis Ababa University to develop tools for communities in East Africa to access current and future water resource conditions and receive vital drought-related information.

Climate change presents great challenges for dryland regions, especially in communities where socioeconomic livelihoods are tied to the consistency of seasonal rainfall.

In the dryland regions of East Africa, drought is a major threat to rainfed agriculture, grazing pastures, and to drinking water supplies, and regional climate is projected to increase drought frequency and severity.

Figuring out the best ways to adapt to droughts requires relevant, timely, and practical information about the propagation of projected droughts into usable water in the ground.

People need straightforward answers to a practical set of questions: How will regional climate change affect soil moisture required to grow crops or the water table in wells that provide precious drinking water in a parched landscape? How will the water stores change season by season and over coming decades? Furthermore, what adaptation strategies are available to address this challenge?

The aim of this interdisciplinary project is to create a new, widely accessible tool for monitoring water storage in drylands, and to use this tool for communicating and enhancing social adaptation to short-term climate shocks and long-term changes to regional hydrology in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.

The team are working across disciplines on climate, hydrology, social factors, forecasting tool and mobile phone app development.

Dr Michaelides said: “Pastoralists and farmers in the drylands of East Africa are becoming increasingly worried about climate change and future droughts.”

“I am looking forward to working together with Professor Assen at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, and Dr Oliver Vivian Wasonga at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, as well as with my UK team of collaborators at the Universities of Bristol, Cardiff, and East Anglia, to provide some practical and useful tools that will hopefully aid communities in adapting to future droughts.”

Last year’s invitation from the UK National Academies—for research teams across different disciplines to propose solutions for the globe’s most challenging issues of resilience—has resulted in 15 international and interdisciplinary consortia receiving over £7 million from the UK Government funded Challenge-led Grants.

The awardees cover research from tsunami resilience and a circular economy of sanitation, to fishery stewardship in a warming climate and a clearer understanding of HIV-related cancers.

Launched as a cross-academy initiative by the UK National Academies—The British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Royal Society—the grants aim to foster collaboration not just between disciplines but countries, too, with each consortium being composed of one research group from the UK and two from developing countries.

The grants are part of the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), a £1.5 billion fund announced by the UK Government to support cutting-edge research and innovation that addresses the global issues faced by developing countries.

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