Generations of unsustainable land-use practices coupled with pressure from increasing population have led to severe land degradation in Ethiopia. This land degradation reduces agricultural productivity and fodder production for livestock, forcing people to farm and graze the land even more intensively to produce food, thereby contributing to a cycle of poverty. Read more . . .
Our Response
We started our work in Ethiopia as a partnership with Greener Ethiopia, focused on the Guraghe Zone. To meet the challenges faced by the rural communities where we work, the tree planting program in Ethiopia is focused on implementing multipurpose systems that restore degraded lands to productivity, while yielding edible fruits, livestock forage, medicinal plants and wood for fuel and construction purposes. Read more . . .
Program Update
In the first trimester of 2011, Trees for the Future has been working with Greener Ethiopia and their partners in Konso to establish two additional nurseries. They now have four community nurseries in Konso and currently have around 260,000 seedlings ready to distribute for the first of the two rainy seasons there. Read more . .
Overview of Social and Environmental Issues
Generations of unsustainable land-use practices coupled with pressure from increasing population have led to severe land degradation in Ethiopia. This land degradation reduces agricultural productivity and fodder production for livestock, forcing people to farm and graze the land even more intensively to sustain themselves, thereby contributing to a cycle of poverty.
This cycle of poverty in Ethiopia is caused by multiple interrelated factors, and is difficult to escape. The main underlying causes of land degradation consist of socio-economic (e.g. population growth and associated activities including deforestation, overgrazing, agricultural expansion, fuel wood scavenging, etc.), natural (e.g. topography, soil type, drought/rainfall intensity, etc), institutional (e.g. poor coordination and lack of capacity) and political factors. These situations have a synergistic effect which leads to increased soil degradation, in turn greatly reducing agricultural and other forms of biological production, exacerbating poverty, and leading to the consumption of natural resources to a degree that is beyond their natural and sustainable replacement capacity. This accelerates the rate of land degradation further, thus creating a vicious circle linking human and environmental degradation.
Overgrazing by cattle, goats, and sheep is prohibiting the natural regeneration of tree
TREES’ Director, Deppner, examines young Calliandra trees, a fast growing species that is performing well in this program, especially at high altitudes.
Honey production using new polyurethane beehives is becoming a great income generating project for local communities, and has built more desire to raise tree species that serve as high-quality bee fodder.
Our Response We started our work in Ethiopia as a partnership with Greener Ethiopia, focused on the Guraghe Zone. To meet the challenges faced by the rural communities where we work, the tree planting program in Ethiopia is focused on implementing multipurpose systems that restore degraded lands to productivity, while yielding edible fruits, livestock forage, medicinal plants and wood for fuel and construction purposes.
Our goal is to rehabilitate and improve productive potential of degraded and marginal lands, thereby improving the socio economic conditions of the participating communities. Our model is community-driven. We work primarily with farmers and community groups in marginalized areas, and full participation and ownership of the projects by those participants is considered crucial to the sustainability and success of our approach.
May 2011
In the first trimester of 2011, Trees for the Future has been working with Greener Ethiopia and their partners in Konso to establish two additional nurseries. They now have four community nurseries in Konso and currently have around 260,000 seedlings ready to distribute for the first of the two rainy seasons there. The rains have been delayed so far, so they are waiting to distribute the seedlings in hope that they will begin soon. In Guraghe Zone, TREES and their partners will have about 1.1 million seedlings in their Katbare and Harmony Farms nurseries which will be ready for distribution in June. They are also providing training to organizations and individuals on nursery management, agroforestry and sustainable land-use practices.
Trees for the Future is also providing training, seeds and technical support to other organizations operating in Ethiopia. TREES’ Ethiopia Program Coordinator has been working with Facilitators for Change – Ethiopia to integrate an agroforestry component into their projects. Around Dimtu, in Oromiya State, FCE is currently working with farmers and community-based organizations to establish 20 community nurseries. By June, these nurseries will have a total of around 200,000 seedlings to plant for coffee shade, as well as to provide fuelwood for cooking and fodder for their livestock. Several Peace Corps Volunteers from the recently-arrived, first group of Conservation and Natural Resource Manager Volunteers are also taking advantage of the technical and material support that TREES provides to start small-scale tree nurseries in their host communities.
