2023 African Great Lakes floods

Pedestrians and motorists risk their lives to transport passengers in a flooded road in Kigali on 28 January 2020. Carrying people was one of the ways to transport them past the flooded areas in late January and early February 2020. Emmanuel Kwizera

The 2023 African Great Lakes floods are floods in April and May 2023 that have killed hundreds of people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.

Quotes

• This study is a clear example of the need for international cooperation on climate justice. Industrialised nations have a responsibility to help nations like Togo, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana to adapt to a worsening problem that they didn’t cause.
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• As such, the fact that we found such a role for climate change is significant. Combined with the very wetter trend in the observational-based data, it’s clear that human-caused warming made this event worse, and wetter, with devastating impacts.
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• Adapting to these now common events is critical, but so is reducing emissions much further and faster, to allow us time to keep up with the changes we’ve already put into motion. Quite simply, until emissions stop these extremes will only grow worse.
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• What we are witnessing in Kenya, Somalia, and Ethiopia is yet another devastating blow to an already fragile humanitarian situation,” said Melaku Yirga, regional director for Africa at the humanitarian organization Mercy Corps. “Floods have washed away entire villages, wiping out homes, farmlands, and the critical infrastructure necessary to support a swift recovery and movement of people, goods, and much-needed humanitarian aid.
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