Near Omar Gona\u2019s house in Djibouti\u2019s Tadjourah city stands a wall three metres high and five metres thick. What might be an eyesore for some is a godsend for the city because the wall holds back the monsoon rains that have decimated people\u2019s lives here for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn 1994, my family home was washed away by a big flood,\u201d says Gona. \u201cSince then, my family have always lived in fear of flooding and in the rainy seasons, we sometimes flee to the mountains leaving all our property here for days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Climate change is leading to unpredictable rainfall in Djibouti, with devastating droughts and floods both on the rise. For Tadjourah, a city on the Indian Ocean, the floods are wreaking havoc on infrastructure and farming, perpetuating widespread poverty and food insecurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With funding from the Global Environment Facility<\/a>, the government is taking action to adapt. Supported by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the authorities built an almost 2km-long wall \u2013 technically referred to as a dike \u2013 to defend Gona\u2019s Marsaki neighbourhood from the floods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such efforts were put to the test during the unprecedented monsoon of 2019 when, according to government sources<\/a>, 150,000 of Djibouti\u2019s 950,000 people needed immediate humanitarian assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet for Gona\u2019s Marsaki neighbourhood, which had been protected by the wall, every one of the 1,500 households were unscathed when the monsoon hit. In stark contrast, Palmar\u00e9, another Tadjourah neighbourhood without a wall, suffered severe damage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSince the flood wall was built, we\u2019ve seen our neighbourhood grow,\u201d says Gona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDuring the flood of 2019, I climbed onto the flood wall to see the other side. The water was rushing furiously with unbelievable power. It was scary. I saw then what my family had avoided.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The success of the initiative has now led to the approval of a much larger, almost $10 million project in Djibouti\u2019s Tadjourah and Dikhil regions. Supported by UNEP and based on a government climate adaptation plan, it aims to further expand \u00a0flood defense infrastructure. Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Near Omar Gona\u2019s house in Djibouti\u2019s Tadjourah city stands a wall three metres high and five metres thick. What might be an eyesore for some is a godsend for the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}