Exclosures for ecosystem restoration and economic benefits in Ethiopia: a catalogue of management options

Mekuria, Wolde; Barron, Jennie; Dessalegn, Mengistu; Adimassu, Zenebe; Amare, Tadele; Wondie, Menale

doi:10.5337/2017.204

Cited by 11 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…This concern might to some extent be addressed by planting forage species in the exclosures and practicing a cut-and-carry system. Furthermore, to deal with local people's concerns, exclosures have to be integrated with income-generating activities, for example by planting high-value trees (Mekuria et al, 2017). Also, rewarding or compensating farmers for their investments in soil and water conservation practices is crucial to sustain the exclosures and their benefits (Adimassu et al, 2017).…”

Section: Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 11mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The most commonly cited opportunity costs of exclosures include decrease in communal grazing lands and curtailed availability of and access to fuelwood (Mekuria et al, 2011b(Mekuria et al, , 2015Mekuria and Aynekulu, 2013;Adimassu et al, 2017). Nevertheless, some of these opportunity costs can be minimized though integrating income-generating activities (e.g., apiaries) within exclosures (Adimassu et al, 2017;Mekuria et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scaling of exclosure-based ecosystem restoration in Ethiopia is constrained by several factors including the lack of a countrywide prioritization and targeting tool and a management plan following the establishment of an exclosure. The lack of incentives for forgoing limited short-term economic benefits is another complaint heard from local communities (Mekuria et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Multicriteria decision-support system to assess the potential of exclosure-based conservation in Ethiopia

Kibret

Haileslassie

Bori

et al. 2020

Renew. Agric. Food Syst.

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Land degradation is a global challenge that affects lives and livelihoods in many communities. Since 1950, about 65% of Africa's cropland, on which millions of people depend, has been affected by land degradation caused by mining, poor farming practices and illegal logging. One-quarter of the land area of Ethiopia is severely degraded. As part of interventions to restore ecosystem services, exclosures have been implemented in Ethiopia since the 1980s. But the lack of tools to support prioritization and more efficient targeting of areas for large-scale exclosure-based interventions remains a challenge. Within that perspective, the overarching objectives of the current study were: (i) to develop a Geographic Information System-based multicriteria decision-support tool that would help in the identification of suitable areas for exclosure initiatives; (ii) to provide spatially explicit information, aggregated by river basin and agroecology, on potential areas for exclosure interventions and (iii) to conduct ex-ante analysis of the potential of exclosure areas for improving ecosystem services in terms of increase in above-ground biomass (AGB) production and carbon storage. The results of this study demonstrated that as much as 10% of Ethiopia's land area is suitable for establishing exclosures. This amounts to 11 million hectares (ha) of land depending on the criteria used to define suitability for exclosure. Of this total, a significant proportion (0.5–0.6 million ha) is currently under agricultural land-use systems. In terms of propriety river basins, we found that the largest amount of suitable area for exclosures falls in the Abay (2.6 million ha) and Tekeze (2.2 million ha) river basins, which are hosts to water infrastructure such as hydropower dams and are threatened by siltation. Ex-ante analysis of ecosystem services indicated that about 418 million tons of carbon can be stored in the AGB through exclosure land use. Ethiopia has voluntarily committed to the Bonn Challenge to restore 15 million ha of degraded land by 2025. The decision-support tool developed by the current study and the information so generated go toward supporting the planning, implementation and monitoring of these kinds of local and regional initiatives.

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Section: Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 11mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Multicriteria decision-support system to assess the potential of exclosure-based conservation in Ethiopia

Kibret

Haileslassie

Bori

et al. 2020

Renew. Agric. Food Syst.

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“…In a cut-and-carry fodder system, local communities harvest grass within the exclosure and carry it to their homestead areas where livestock is kept. A cut-and-carry fodder system increases the quantity and quality of fodder, limits livestock movements and reduces grazing pressure (Mekuria et al, 2017). The combination of the different methods in an integrated approach leads to a synergistic effects and increased efficiency.…”

Section: Terracingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic importance of termites and integrated soil and water conservation for the rehabilitation of termite-degraded lands and termite management in Ethiopia

Debelo¹

2020

J. Soil Sci. Environ. Manage.

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In Ethiopia, termites pose serious threat to a variety of agricultural crops, forestry, rangelands, houses and other wooden structures. Termite problem is particularly prevalent in the western part of the country, where it has persisted for many years and has received wide publicity. Termites appeared in the region for the first time in 1904 at a specific place called Bafano Koreche around Kiltu Kara town in West Wallaga zone. From there, they spread in different directions to other areas and termite problem has increased from time to time. The severity of termite destruction has become worse than ever in all the four zones western Oromia National Regional State (ONRS). Termites are also causing serious damages to pastureland in the semi-arid areas of Borna and Guji zones of southern ONRS threatening livestock production. By damaging crops, termites cause food insecurity and by damaging natural vegetation they cause denudation, accelerated erosion, and loss of biodiversity. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the economic and environmental destruction termites pose in the rural areas of ONRS. Finally, the paper made concrete recommendations to government policy makers and land use professionals in their effort to mitigate the challenges.

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“…Management principally includes selecting, protecting and pruning regenerating plants arising from re-sprouting rootstock or from seeds. It does not include exclosures, where agriculture is excluded from an area of land to allow regeneration (Mekuria et al, 2017). As a practice, although it has often been conflated with communitymanaged natural regeneration, assisted natural regeneration and enrichment planting (Reij and Garrity, 2016), it can be usefully distinguished from them, albeit that combinations of these different practices are often integrated alongside one-another across landscapes (Table 1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opportunities and Constraints for Using Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration for Land Restoration in Sub-Saharan Africa

Chomba

Sinclair

Savadogo³

et al. 2020

Front. For. Glob. Change

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Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) comprises a set of practices used by farmers to encourage the growth of native trees on agricultural land. FMNR is reported to deliver a number of positive impacts, including increasing agricultural productivity through soil fertility improvement and feed for livestock, incomes, and other environmental benefits. It is widely promoted in Africa as a cost-effective way of restoring degraded land, that overcomes the challenge of low survival rates associated with tree planting in arid and semi-arid areas. Despite being widely promoted, the evidence for these bold claims about FMNR has not been systematically analyzed. This paper reviews the scientific evidence related to the contexts in which FMNR is practiced across sub-Saharan Africa, how this influences the composition of regenerating vegetation, and the resulting environmental and socioeconomic benefits derived from it. This reveals that quantitative evidence on FMNR outcomes is sparse and mainly related to experience in the Maradi and Zinder regions of Niger. There is little mechanistic understanding relating how context conditions the diversity and abundance of regenerating trees and how this in turn is related to ecosystem function and livelihood benefits. This makes it difficult to determine where and for whom FMNR is an appropriate restoration technique and where it might be necessary to combine it with enrichment planting. Given the need for viable restoration practices for agricultural land across Africa, well beyond the climatic and edaphic contexts covered by existing FMNR studies, we recommend research combining functional ecology and socioeconomic assessments, embedded as colearning components within scaling up initiatives. This would fill key knowledge gaps, enabling the development of context-sensitive advice on where and how to promote FMNR, as well as the calculation of the return on investment of doing so.

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Exclosures for ecosystem restoration and economic benefits in Ethiopia: a catalogue of management options

Cited by 11 publications

References 5 publications

Multicriteria decision-support system to assess the potential of exclosure-based conservation in Ethiopia

Multicriteria decision-support system to assess the potential of exclosure-based conservation in Ethiopia

Economic importance of termites and integrated soil and water conservation for the rehabilitation of termite-degraded lands and termite management in Ethiopia

Opportunities and Constraints for Using Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration for Land Restoration in Sub-Saharan Africa

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