By Desalegne Tadesse
“The knowledge of how to provide incentives and build resilience in the face of climate change remains a fundamental challenge in Ethiopia alongside many other developing countries. To address this challenge we need to consider how multiple agricultural, social and environmental interventions fit into biophysical and social systems in-landscapes. A community-based participatory approach is the best way to start addressing the challenges and to develop suitable ways forward that help to build climate resilience.” – Jennie Barron, Theme Leader, Sustainable Agricultural Water Management, IWMI.
In Ethiopia, the 2015/2016 El Niño affected the livelihoods of more than 10 million farming communities and altered the path towards economic growth. According to FAO, this was the worst El Niño event in the country thus far. Its impact sent a strong message to the international community on the importance of remedial mechanisms in the social, environmental and institutional areas.
Building resilience to climate change shocks is a matter of necessity, to strengthen the ability of local communities to cope. Making sure ecosystem services within the landscape are sustained will provide much-needed increased resilience, because inevitably there will be more droughts, floods and pest invasions affecting livelihoods, health and food security. To respond to this need, USAID and IWMI collaborated on the project ‘Building Resilience to Climate Change by Sustaining Ecosystem Services through Improved Watershed Management.’ Aligning with national priorities, the project piloted a new tool aimed at facilitating community dialogue to build climate resilience through improved watershed management, with explicit consideration of ecosystem services.
The participatory protocol complements existing national and local efforts in Ethiopia on watershed management by incorporating a holistic consideration of livelihoods and ecosystem services. Local actors take ownership of the planning for improved paths of sustainability through development of a plan of action for landscape management. For example, in the Emba-Hasti watershed, over 30 years of soil water conservation has changed the landscape. There has been a re-greening with more permanent vegetation and less degraded areas, even though the rainfall patterns have increased in variability, making it more difficult for farmers to secure water for their crops and livestock.
A number of key policies and strategies have been enacted to adapt to and mitigate climate change effects, such as the National Policy on Natural Resource and the Environment, Community-based Participatory Watershed Development Guideline, Program of Adaptation to Climate Change and National Adaptation Program of Action, Revised Food Security Strategy and Productive Safety Net Program. Nevertheless, very few take a landscape perspective and incorporate both livelihood and ecosystems services.
The recent Roundtable held on 20 September 2016 shared insights on communities and climate change linkages in the Ethiopian policy context.
Gaps and opportunities in developing tools to coping the climate change?
At the Roundtable, Liza Debeves, Social Sciences researcher in IWMI’s Ethiopia Office said, “Research shows that resilience strategies work best when they combine the socio-cultural aspects with the biophysical and when all levels of actors are involved in the planning and execution of the activities. Our guidelines bring together the farmers and the officials for a fully inclusive participatory decision making and planning process. This will increase the chances for the success of action plans and ensure the buy-in from all the actors.”
“The communities put together very strong climate adaptation and resilience plans,” said Chris Kosnik, Director of the USAID Water Office. “Particularly in Ethiopia, communities are actively looking at how to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of potential changes in climate. Increased resilience will be really important in the future.”
Ecosystem services and community-based participatory climate smart activities
Underlining climate change impacts on ecosystems services, Chris Konsik further noted that with climate change the onset and length of cropping seasons are no longer the same. “We will experience more times where we have little rainfall and more droughts. These situations are obviously potentially devastating to farmers and the environment”. In the context of building climate resilience, a community-based participatory approach will an effective way to maintain ecosystems services and consequently safeguard productivity and livelihoods within agricultural systems. (see Chris talking here.)
Similarly the participants agreed that the community dialogue that focuses on ecosystem services and resilience strengthening components are important and could potentially add value to existing participatory plans and roadmaps in watershed development in Ethiopia.
About the project
Building Resilience to Climate Change by Sustaining Ecosystem Services through Improved Watershed Management is a 1-year project funded by USAID and WLE that aims to enhance food security, improve nutrition and reduce poverty by developing a participatory rapid-planning tool for community-based resilience building at watershed and local landscape scale. It contributes to facilitating locally owned action plans to strengthen resilience through water, land and ecosystems services management. It is in line with government priorities that entrust communities with the responsibilities for developing their work programmes and bylaws to enhance climate resilience.
The tool, thus, supports Ethiopia’s climate-resilient policies and strategies that are grounded in participatory approaches, and specifically complements and extends the government’s information to recognize the essential role played by ecosystems services in transforming vulnerable livelihoods while strengthening climate resilience at local landscape*.
* Jennie Barron and Liza Debevec (2016), Community dialogues to build resilience to climate change: Responding to the Ethiopian policy context.
