Floods and Health in Gambella region, Ethiopia: An ... - lumes

community is very expensive because the victims have to be provided houses; land, and various social
amenities should be installed (Chan, 1995). Given that previous resettlement programmes in other
parts of Ethiopia and in Gambella region was poorly planned and was not based on enough study
(Woube, 1999) it is necessary for the Gambella regional administration to draw lessons from the
previous unsuccessful resettlement programmes.
Relocation may not be a sustainable solution as it could be shifting a problem from one place to other
place or from one health problem to other health problem. For example poorly planned resettlement can
result in huge loss of forest and other natural resources causing a massive negative impact on
environmental sustainability which in turn directly or indirectly affect human health. Therefore the
Gambella region could draw lessons from other flood prone countries such Mozambique and Vietnam.
For example in Vietnam there is the flood policy that encourages living with floods as a coping strategy
for flood hazard. This “recognizes that flooding can not be, nor should be, completely controlled and
that efforts should also go into ensuring that communities can cope with, co-exist with and perhaps
even exploit floods (Tran et al, 2006). This approach is also used in Mozambique to cope with flood
hazard (Cairncross et al, 2006). However there is the need to put the Mozambique and Vietnam cases
in context when mapping out the coping strategies in Gambella in order to prevent unintended
consequences.
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