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Wood! Trees are falling in Sudan
At the Um Raquba reception camp in eastern Sudan, dozens of trees are being felled by bulldozers to create space to build shelters and provide firewood for displaced Ethiopians fleeing violent conflict in their country’s northern region, Tigray.
One of the tens of thousands of Ethiopian refugees is Zayet Wali, 65, who is building a wooden shelter to protect her sick husband from the scorching sun.
Wali shares how it is being sourced through the supply of wood: “I got the wood from a person who was building their house and I picked up another pile myself. The machine cuts them for us so they are ready to use.”
A blow to the environment
According to the head of the Gedaref state health department, Amira Elgada, the equivalent of 65 square meters of trees disappear every day. Their destruction is a severe blow to the environment that has harmful consequences for various species of plants and animals. But despair can sometimes precede ecology.
Abadi Grazdier, another exposed Ethiopian, explains that the options are limited, “In my country I have never cut a branch, it is forbidden, but here I have no other solution. We take the wood from there and use it to make fire. There is nothing else. than wood to use. “
An urgent political crisis
In fact, Gedaref has a desert climate and in these semi-arid regions, acacias are important from an ecological point of view, but for the tens of thousands of Ethiopian refugees camping in Um Raquba, their main concern is to survive on a wooden roof. . their heads and firewood to cook their meals.
The department head, Elgada, says the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Sudanese Commission for Refugees have been asked to provide non-wood shelters, such as tents, and to provide gas bottles to avoid the use of logs.
Since Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched a military offensive on November 4 against the Tigray authorities, promising to install “legitimate” institutions, more than 45,000 people have fled the region.
