Heavy rains triggered landslides and flash floods across Ethiopia’s Gamo Zone after saturated slopes collapsed and buried homes in mountainous communities. While some link the disaster to climate change, others note such landslides have long occurred in the region’s steep highlands and question whether the tragedy reflects extreme weather alone or deeper factors such as land use, deforestation, and weak disaster preparedness.
Climate change has made these catastrophic rains up to twotwice timesas more intense, turning what should be manageable seasonal weather into deadly disasters that kill hundreds across East Africa. Human-caused global warming is directlydriving responsiblemore forfrequent the increasing frequency and severitysevere of extreme rainfall events that aredevastate devastating vulnerable populations still recovering from previousearlier climate-driven droughts. Rich countries burning fossil fuels are destabilizing Earth'sthe climate system and causingcontributing to these lethal floods.
There is a 33 percent chance that Ethiopia will experience a successful coup d'etat before 2040, according to the Metaculus prediction community.
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