Southward-Northward Resettlement in Ethiopia

Southward-Northward Resettlement in Ethiopia Mengistu Woube Uppsala University The availability and deterioration of land resources have been the pull and push factors respectively for resettlement in Ethiopia, although these have been obscured by religious war, ethnic conflict, and shortage of food. On the one hand, the resettlement processes have given rise to cultural adaptation, and on the other hand they have led to depletion of resources and land-use conflict. The question thus raised is whether the traditional settlement morphology should be encouraged or the carefully planned resettlement environment should be introduced as short- and long-term development strategies. It is important to define the terms: environment, settlement, resettlement and resettlement schemes. In this article, environment is defined as the surrounding community and has a multidisciplinary implication, which has both physical and social characteristics (see Figure 1). In the figure on page 86, the first box shows social environment, which includes human population, culture, language, and institutions. Physical environment includes topography, vegetation, soils, rivers, floods, etc. Settlement exists within the physical environment and is defined as an original place where individuals or a group of people adapt themselves to the existing physical and social systems. Resettlement (sefera) exists within the physical environment and is defined as a process whereby individuals or a group of people spontaneously leave their original settlement sites to resettle in different areas and adapt themselves to the physical, social, and administrative systems of the new environment . The Amharic word sefera can be explained as nonplanned©Northeast African Studies (ISSN 0740-9133) Vol. 2, No. 1 (New Series) 1995, pp. 85-106 S5 86 Mengistu Woube ENUIRONMENT Z UU S ? a ce Z Population Z a -t TC CD "?I O O a. .Topography CD CD CD a ? e Ethnicity Uegetation SETTLEMENT ? RESETTLEMENT PROCESS i Riuer Agriculture Rainfall f* a E Technology a o a. c o C S ? ? CC => Z ENUIRONMENT Figure 1. Environment, Settlement, and Resettlement Processes (spontaneous, emergency, and forced) or planned resettlement. Finally, resettlement scheme is defined as a planned, government-sponsored project involving the transfer of people, through selection and control, from one region to another. Resettlement processes in Ethiopia result from a combination of physical, political, socio-economic, administrative, technical and managerial phenomena rather than from biological need. Owing to natural calamity, pressure upon resources, political instability, ethnic and landuse conflicts, different ethnic groups have moved to and from settlement sites, either of their own free will or because of external interference . In the last 30 years, the political leaderships of Ethiopia have attempted to integrate the process of resettlement into their national development plans and programs. The planned resettlement of 1984 was Southward-Northward Resettlement in Ethiopia 87 the most recent example of this trend in Ethiopia and constitutes one of the most massive rural reorganization actions in the African continent. Most of the resettlement schemes have not succeeded in improving the basic necessity of life; rather, they have led to environmental degradation . In order to avoid such problems, a scientific study concerning resettlement processes requires not only detailed knowledge of resettlement and land use, but also basic understanding of the physical and human environments. Hence, research should be done before any decision about a resettlement scheme is made, to achieve an understanding of the resource potential, environmental conditions, and ecological and land-use systems. However, such forethought has received apathetic attention from scholars and planners and the political leaderships give little room for planning. The objectives of this article are: (a) to examine the pre- and post19508 resettlement processes and environment relationships; and (b) to determine whether these relationships have had a negative impact on the physical features of rural Ethiopia. It is hypothesized that both nonplanned and planned resettlements have had adverse environmental consequences on the land and human resources. Explanatory Model of the Resettlement Process In Ethiopia, two major types of resettlement processes—nonplanned and planned—have occurred. Nonplanned resettlement includes spontaneous , emergency, and forced movement of people to a new site. Planned resettlement includes both voluntary and involuntary movement of people to resettle elsewhere. Many interwoven factors influence these processes, some of which are historical, socio-politicoeconomic , physical, technological, and cultural (see Figure 2). Nonplanned...