The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) joined forces in 2019, leveraging a combined 65 years’ experience in research on the role of forests and trees in solving critical global challenges.
Expanded organizational structure will help stem land degradation and roll-out agroforestry.
Integrated watershed development and promotion of context-based agroforestry practices are needed to improve the livelihoods of smallholders and achieve sustainable development.
According to Ethiopia’s Ministry of Agriculture and development partners (World Agroforestry and Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR-ICRAF), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and other non-governmental organizations), there are several successful examples of watershed development, management and agroforestry practices in Ethiopia. But expanding their scale to cover the nation and benefit a greater proportion of the population remains a challenge.
Many experts agree that to accelerate adoption across the country, a cascading of the National Watershed and Agroforestry Multi-stakeholder Platform is needed at region, zone and district levels. To achieve this, it is important to conduct comprehensive consultations periodically.
It was with this in mind that a consultation workshop for cascading the Platform into regions was held on 11 June 2021 in Adama. The workshop was jointly organized by the Natural Resources Management and Development Directorate of the Ministry of Agriculture and CIFOR-ICRAF.
Senior scientist and development advisor at CIFOR-ICRAF, Endalkachew Woldemeskel, emphasized the need for cascading the Platform, saying it would eventually help to realize properly managed natural resources whereby sustainable production, food security and enhanced livelihoods are ensured. He called upon the team of experts attending the workshop to contribute to achieving this goal.
Woldemeskel underscored that agroforestry should be practised ‘by choice, not by chance’ because it has multiple benefits, including sustaining a healthy environment.
He also reminded the participants that a workshop for establishing the first ‘engagement landscape’ in Oromia Region was held in December 2020, which designated specific landscapes, altogether comprising six ‘woredas’ (districts), among which, Boset was indicated as an exemplar district.
He emphasized the need to establish an engagement landscape: it serves as a live, learning geo-laboratory and as a national exemplar. He particularly appreciated the Somali Region for taking that CIFOR-ICRAF provide technical support.
While discussing the status of land degradation, conservation and land restoration in Ethiopia, Resource Governance and Socio-Economic Research Director at the Addis Ababa University Water and Land Resource Centre, Amare Bantider, said that the threat of land degradation as well as problems caused by climatic, socio-economic and demographic changes was uppermost in Ethiopia and could limit the developmental aspirations of the country, in general, and result in food insecurity, in particular.
Bantider noted that about one-third of the country’s soil depth is below 50 cm, which indicates a serious level of land degradation in the country. He also said that of all the hilly land that needed to be terraced in Ethiopia, only 23 percent is protected from erosion with terraces while the remaining 67 percent is vulnerable to land degradation. He further said that about 75 percent of the country is either arid or semi-arid and 170 out of 910 districts are highly prone to recurrent droughts and food insecurity.
The total amount of aboveground biomass and carbon stock in Ethiopia were estimated to be 1993 million tons and 1294 million tons of carbon, respectively, in 2016, Amare said. He further stated that forest and woodland cover is declining in Ethiopia, which implies ecosystem services generated from them are also reducing. But the good news is that the contribution of sustainable land management to carbon sequestration in cropland is improving.
During his presentation, Aklilu Mesfin, a project advisor from the Ministry of Agriculture, admitted integration and synergy among stakeholders was still poor for implementing watershed and agroforestry projects, underlining the need for cascading of the Platform at region, zone and district levels so the expansion of scale and implementation of ‘best fit’ options in rural areas will be a reality. He also mentioned poor implementation capacity at grassroot level, poor research extension links and problems with data and knowledge management, among others.
Niguse Hagazi, National Agroforestry Project Coordinator at CIFOR-ICRAF Ethiopia, underlined the need to practise agroforestry in a highly populated country like Ethiopia as more and more forests were cleared to make way for agricultural land.
‘Nothing is more important than a tree in an agricultural landscape,’ he said, underscoring the need to practise agroforestry.
In his presentation, Hagazi shared the lessons learned from CIFOR-ICRAF and partners regarding the importance of ‘options by context’.
‘The options-by-context approach increases the likelihood that the interventions we propose for implementation in a given locality are fit for the purpose,’ he told the participants. ‘Context matters for selection of interventions and setting objectives.’
Divided into groups, the participants actively engaged in exercises to realize the objectives of the workshop by developing a roadmap on the modality of cascading of the Platform to the regions, how to facilitate the implementation of watershed and agroforestry strategies and producing an action plan.
Of all the participating regions — including Amhara, Oromia, South, Somali and Tigray —Oromia Region was given the lead in cascading the Platform through its organizational structures of Region, Zone and Woreda, also taking into consideration the establishment of the first engagement landscape in the region.
The figure represents the expected role of the cascaded regional Platform for expanding the scale of context-based agroforestry options and practices from the Oromia Engagement Landscape across Ethiopia. The Landscape (represented by the black oval) is a long-term restoration observatory for focused implementation of the options and practices and to generate evidence, and to develop monitoring tools and models. The Landscape is also the site of a restoration project of the United States Agency for International Development that carried out biophysical and socio-economic surveys to study permanence and leakage outcomes of long-term restoration practices.
Acknowledgements
The United States Agency for International Development, David and Lucile Packard Foundation and Irish Aid provided support in the establishment of the platform and in cascading it by organizing the workshop.
World Agroforestry (ICRAF) is a centre of scientific and development excellence that harnesses the benefits of trees for people and the environment. Knowledge produced by ICRAF enables governments, development agencies and farmers to utilize the power of trees to make farming and livelihoods more environmentally, socially and economically sustainable at multiple scales. ICRAF is one of the 15 members of the CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future. We thank all donors who support research in development through their contributions to the CGIAR Fund.