The Impact of Gibe III Hydro Dam-Induced Flood Disaster and Its Influence on the Livelihood of the Dassenech, South Omo, Ethiopia

Even though the government has invested huge resources upstream of the Omo River basin, it has not adequately considered either the rights of the Lower Omo ValleyValley downstream vulnerable pastoral and agro-pastoral communities or the induced flooding disaster risk that it poses on the live and livelihood system of the villagers. The crisis unfolded because of the Gibe III dam, which induced disaster for the Dassenech people. Such an effect disrupts the entire subsistence economy and livelihood system of the Lower Omo Valley Dassenech communities, not only food security severely threatened their survival system and transboundary regional peace and security as well. This destruction of pastoral and agro-pastoral livelihoods swiftly produced major humanitarian disasters including recurrent occurrences of flooding and drought in the area, with widespread conditions of starvation, disease, and spiral interethnic armed conflict in the tri-nation border region as groups desperately compete for vanishing resources. Mitigation and compensation measures related to the dam’s impacts are wholly inadequate, even undermining the existing subsistence livelihood, impoverished socio-economic, and politically vulnerable and marginalized pastoral and agro-pastoral villagers of the Dassenech.