The Horn of Africa is a region plagued by recurrent drought, which makes rural communities extremely vulnerable to water scarcity, food insecurity, and economic losses during drought periods. The severe and prolonged droughts result in reduced soil moisture and drinking water reserves, producing food insecurity, livestock loss, and major water shortages, affecting millions of people within the Horn of Africa drylands (HAD).

The DOWN2EARTH project aims towards improving community-centric adaptation and resilience to droughts in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia by developing community-relevant climate services. The focus will be on providing tools that forecast and project water scarcity and its consequences at or near the Earth’s surface for the agro-pastoral populations. 

IMPROVING RESILIENCE TO CLIMATE CHANGE

DOWN2EARTH is composed of a multidisciplinary project team that will deliver state-of-the-art and community relevant climate services that focus on water scarcity and its consequences at or near the Earth’s surface (hence DOWN2EARTH) to increasingly vulnerable agro-pastoral populations in HAD.

The project is designed to bolster existing climate services frameworks, improve decision support to governments and NGOs in the most vulnerable HAD countries (Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia), and to improve community-centric adaptation and resilience to climate change.

The DOWN2EARTH project will:

• Assess the socio-economic dimensions and human dynamics of climate change including feedbacks between climatic shocks, human behavior, and policy implementation.
• Characterize historical trends and future projections of water scarcity, food insecurity, population, and land use.
• Develop and enhance multi-level decision-support tools that emphasize the translation of climate information into critical land and water information required for adaptation and resilience by end users and state/regional governments.
• Strengthen regional climate services through capacity building, citizen science, information dissemination, expansion of data networks, and policy implementation.

A MULTIDISCIPLINARY PROJECT TEAM

The DOWN2EARTH project is an EU-funded project under the Horizon 2020 framework running from September 2020 - September 2024. The project includes 14 universities and stakeholders.

Aalborg University primarily contributes with satellite gravity data processing and model comparisons to the project. Researchers, Professor Ehsan Forootan and Assistant Professor Maike Schumacher from the Department of Planning at Aalborg University is a part of the project's Climate/Water Data Team.