Shaping land management and climate action in Ethiopia

Context

Soil degradation, negative impacts of climate change, rapid population growth and a lack of employment opportunities threaten the livelihoods of a large part of the population in the highlands of Ethiopia. Nearly 50 per cent of agricultural land has been eroded and at least 30,000 hectares of fertile land providing livelihoods for more than 150,000 people are lost each year. Less marginal locations are also increasingly affected, such as the water catchment areas of the larger lakes (Lake Chamo, Lake Tana). The strategies and policies developed for sustainable land management (SLM) are often constrained by a lack of capabilities on the ground. Furthermore, staff at public institutions are not yet sufficiently familiar with applying the various instruments for community-based land use planning or with establishing watershed user associations.

Objective

Government and community capabilities in natural resource management (NRM) are improved.

Approach

The project pursues the following aims:

• improve policies and policy-making capabilities focusing on such topics as the impact, strategy and design of NRM in future programmes, combating overgrasing and empowering women
• push forward land reform by providing strategic and technical advice on designing land reform policies and a federal legal framework, addressing tenure rights, land use planning and land administration
• empower communities to develop and implement watershed management and NRM
• develop and implement a strategic approach to safeguard the critical Lake Chamo landscape
• support the digitalisation of the Ministry of Agriculture services, provide strategic advice and develop internal processes and knowledge management to create a state-of-the-art platform for e-learning.

Last update: November 2023