Deforestation, Wood Famine, and Environmental Degradation in Ethiopia's Highland Ecosystems: Urgent Need for Action

One of the major challenges facing Ethiopia in striving for development is environmental degradation, manifested in the degradation of land and water resources as well as loss of biodiversity. Land degradation is expressed in terms of soil erosion and loss of soil fertility. Deforestation/devegetation is one of the major factors contributing to land degradation by exposing the soil to various agents of erosion. With high-intensity rainstorms and extensive steep slopes, Ethiopia is highly susceptible to soil erosion, especially in the highlands. The organic content of soils is often low due to the widespread use of dung and crop residues for energy.

Land degradation in turn greatly affects agricultural productivity and production. In 1990 alone, for instance, reduced soil depth caused by erosion resulted in a grain production loss of 57,000 (at 3.5 mm soil loss) to 128,000 tons (at 8 mm soil depth). It has been estimated that the grain production lost due to land degradation in 1990 would have been sufficient to feed more than four million people. The availability of land suitable for agriculture is shrinking, while at the same time the amount of land required to feed the growing population is steadily increasing.

With agricultural productivity increases lagging behind population growth rates, the gap between availability and demand for agricultural land continues to grow, resulting in severe land-use conflicts between crop farming, animal grazing, and forestry. Natural high forests and plantations are encroached upon and cleared for cultivation or grazing by local people. State and community forest interests collide with local grazing interests on hillside land, and grazing and fuel wood/charcoal interests confront each other in the woodlands and bushlands.

Forestry can play a role in reducing land pressure and land degradation, but forestry alone cannot solve the problem. Even if the management of existing forest resources is improved and new trees and forests are established, this may well prove futile if high population growth rates continue to increase the need for crop and grazing land. Using the land for forestry to improve soil fertility or to rehabilitate and conserve the environment will be viewed as secondary to using the land for cropping and grazing to meet immediate survival needs. Attempts to alleviate land degradation are therefore critically dependent on efforts to deal with the three main underlying causes of land degradation, namely population growth, low agricultural productivity, and high dependence on fuel wood, dung, and crop residue as sources of household energy.

Considering the magnitude of the land degradation problem, conservation programs implemented so far are inadequate. The policy, institutional, planning, and technical constraints responsible for the inadequacy of past conservation efforts are presented, and any future initiatives to overcome the escalating land degradation problem in Ethiopia should first address these constraints realistically. There are no universal formulae or solutions that can work across the board; rather, solutions should be locality-specific and closely tied to the socioeconomic setup of the communities. In this regard, forestry can play a significant role in either preventing or arresting land degradation by avoiding or reducing soil erosion through reduced surface runoff and maintenance of organic matter and soil fertility. It can help not only in addressing off-farm and on-farm dimensions of soil erosion but also in maintaining the fertility of the soil, thereby alleviating land degradation and the destruction of natural resources. The various means by which forestry can be used to address problems of land degradation are discussed as outlined in the Ethiopian Forestry Action Program.