Drought in Kenya
Drought in Kenya. Photo: Brendan Cox, Oxfam
“When the Water Ends,” a 16-minute video produced by Yale Environment 360 in collaboration with MediaStorm, tells the story of this conflict and of the increasingly dire drought conditions facing parts of East Africa. To report this video, Evan Abramson, a 32-year-old photographer and videographer, spent two months in the region in 2010, living among the herding communities. He returned with a tale that many climate scientists say will be increasingly common in the 21st century and beyond — how worsening drought in parts of Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere will pit group against group, nation against nation. As one UN official told Abramson, the clashes between Kenyan and Ethiopian pastoralists represent “some of the world’s first climate-change conflicts.”

But the story recounted in “When the Water Ends” is not only about climate change, according to YaleE360. It’s also about how deforestation and land degradation — due in large part to population pressures — are exacting a toll on impoverished farmers and nomads as the earth grows ever more barren.

Abramson offers a good insight into the complicated conflict over water in an increasingly stressed region.

Cover banner: Oxfam International

Please click through to the video:

When the Water Ends Video
Courtesy of YaleE360 Documentaries