Charting Troubled Waters: Documenting Ecological and Social Change in the Lower Omo Valley

By David-Paul Pertaub SIDERA – Shifting Inequality Research Dynamics in Ethiopia: Research to Application – is an 18 month ESRC funded inter-disciplinary research project exploring the relationship between conflict, poverty and environmental degradation in the lower Omo region of Ethiopia.  Kicking off this month, the project comprises three working groups based in three different countries…

*New paper* ‘Do our bodies know their ways?’ Villagization, food insecurity, and ill-being in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley

Some results from my research in Ethiopia are now available, ahead of publication in African Studies Review. The paper, co-authored with Lucie Buffavand, is a product of several years work in the lower Omo valley, where a massive hydroelectric dam and sugar plantations are reshaping the landscape and people’s opportunities to live within it. We investigated the experience of people subjected to a campaign of ‘villagization’ – resettlement associated with the establishment of plantations on lands previously used for farming, herding, and foraging.