Balancing Water Demands and Increasing Climate Resilience: Establishing a Baseline Water Risk Assessment Model in Ethiopia

This technical note by the World Resources Institute describes the development of a baseline water risk model for Ethiopia, using 2015 as a baseline. The model provides subbasin-level estimates of water withdrawal and consumption across irrigation, livestock, domestic, and industrial sectors, combined with 36 years of remotely-sensed renewable water resources data to identify water stress and variability.

• The baseline water risk model utilizes four specific indicators to map water risks across Ethiopia: baseline water stress (total annual water withdrawal relative to available resources), months of water scarcity (months where water stress is extremely high), seasonal variability (variation between months), and interannual variability (variation between years).
• To estimate industrial water demand in the absence of a comprehensive location dataset for factories and manufacturing, the model used NASA Nighttime Lights as a proxy, assuming brighter areas indicate greater industrial presence. This approach attributed 55% of industrial water demand to the Awash Basin, which is comparable to a Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) study that attributed 60% to the same basin.
• The model contains several methodological limitations: it excludes water storage and conveyance infrastructure, does not account for environmental flow requirements, and ignores transboundary water obligations. Additionally, it does not consider economic water scarcity resulting from lack of investment or institutional capacity.
• Data gaps necessitated the use of proxies for certain sectors: the Growth and Transformation (GTP II) water delivery targets for 2015-2020 were used as a proxy for domestic water demand, and an average irrigation efficiency of 44.3% from the Awash Basin was applied nationwide for medium- and large-scale schemes to ensure consistency.
• The model's livestock water demand analysis is incomplete for certain areas, as data from one zone in the Afar region and two zones in the Somali region were unavailable, meaning potential demand from these three zones was excluded.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). Balancing Water Demands and Increasing Climate Resilience: Establishing a Baseline Water Risk Assessment Model in Ethiopia. https://www.wri.org/research/water-demands-climate-resilience-risk-ethiopia

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Balancing Water Demands and Increasing Climate Resilience: Establishing a Baseline Water Risk Assessment Model in Ethiopia. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/water-demands-climate-resilience-risk-ethiopia.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Balancing Water Demands and Increasing Climate Resilience: Establishing a Baseline Water Risk Assessment Model in Ethiopia |url=https://www.wri.org/research/water-demands-climate-resilience-risk-ethiopia |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendbalancing, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Balancing Water Demands and Increasing Climate Resilience: Establishing a Baseline Water Risk Assessment Model in Ethiopia}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/water-demands-climate-resilience-risk-ethiopia}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }