Environmental Conservation Through Community Participation - Ethiopia

Environmental Conservation Through Community Participation is integrating traditional conservation activities with livelihoods issues. They are empowering women and men to generate more income, close off land for conservation purposes and accessing new technology that help to reduce community pressure on forests.

Fast facts:

This activity has directly impacted 228 women. These women were trained in capacity building which mainly focused on two areas: business development services and environmental rehabilitation;
Training is given by the experts invited from the district micro and small enterprise office and social workers.

The problem

The area in Ethiopia that this activity is focusing on was once covered by dense forest. Today, almost all of that forest has been destroyed except for some scattered Acacia trees. The main cause of this land degradation is livestock overgrazing and deforestation. The community heavily depends on cattle rearing and farming for their livelihoods, but their practices are destructive and are contributing to deforestation and desertification. This, coupled with climate change variability, has aggravated the food security situation.

The solution

This activity is helping women generate income from off-farm activities to reduce their dependence on natural forests. Women were organized into 10 self-help groups. The women completed training and capacity building and have started to engage in small scale businesses. In addition, members of the women groups have decided to develop and plant tree seedlings around their households and farms as part of a reforestation project. There was also training on how to use energy saving stoves to reduce the consumption firewood use. Reducing the amount of firewood used by households improves health, saves women the time they would have spent collecting firewood and decreases deforestation.

Helping the planet

The women have developed internal bylaws as part of the self-help organization that require members to not engage in environmentally devastating activities and should stands against anything or anyone that would harm the local environment.

Helping people

This project prioritizes women as beneficiaries for two reasons: first, traditionally women are the heads of the household and are typically more engaged in cutting trees for their energy needs. Second, women traditionally feed the household and need to generate income in order to do this (usually by selling firewood for extra money).

Scaling Up

The environmental rehabilitation work can be replicated in other villages facing similar issues.