It’s Time to restore rangelands in the face of climate change

by Shewit Emmanuel, Country Director, Ethiopia

This week, I’m taking part in New York Climate Week, uniting with Farm Africa colleagues and others behind the week’s theme of It’s Time to emphasise the urgency of the need to take climate action.

As two of the week’s event themes of Environmental Justice and Nature highlight, It’s Time to amplify the voices and stories of those who bear the brunt of climate impacts, but have been left out of the decision making. And It’s Time to preserve and restore the Earth’s ecosystems and biodiversity.

Residents living near Abijatta-Shalla National Park in the Central Rift Valley in my home country of Ethiopia are one such community that has heavily borne the brunt of climate impact.

Here, increasing weather extremes are bringing severe droughts and flooding. The instability has unbalanced land use practices as people are forced to compete for dwindling resources, leading to overgrazing and land degradation.

Challenging? Yes.

Insurmountable? No.

Thanks to a collaborative and innovative approach, at Abijatta-Shalla great progress has been made in restoring the ecosystem people and wildlife depend on, even in the face of climate change.

Conflict and crisis

Farm Africa has been working with the community and park management to improve livelihood opportunities while restoring and protecting the deteriorating rangelands within the park.

Historically, in an effort to protect park biodiversity, grazing within the park was prohibited. Unfortunately, this gave rise to long-standing conflict between park management and local pastoralists and agro-pastoralists, who rely on these lands to sustain their livestock.

Severe droughts intensified the problem, causing widespread flouting of grazing restrictions to save livestock.

As a result, the park suffered from extensive land degradation and dwindling biodiversity. Some areas were barren for over 20 years.

It was time for things to change.

Restoration through partnership

As discussed in our recent publication Reviving nature’s symphony: the triumph of participatory rangeland management in transforming a degraded landscape, the key to overcoming these issues was involving the local community in the management of degraded rangelands within park boundaries.

After a period of negotiation, in April 2022, The Mansa Participatory Rangeland Management Cooperative, with members from 462 local households, was established and given a mandate to restore and sustainably manage a 558 hectare area of degraded land within the park.

The speed of transformation has been astonishing. In just 18 months, 95% of the barren lands within the Mansa boundary have been restored.

The re-greening of barren lands has significantly reduced soil and wind erosion, which has reduced siltation in the adjacent Abijatta Lake. With the improved water quality, fish populations and bird species have rebounded.

The long-standing conflict between the local community and the park has also resolved; the two are now working in partnership to protect the park’s vital resources.

The secret to success

How did the Mansa cooperative do it? By adapting their livelihood strategies, as people in these lands have been doing for thousands of years.

With guidance from Farm Africa, cooperative members have implemented a new system for feeding livestock. The community now respects the grazing restrictions set out by the Mansa cooperative because, in exchange, coop members sustainably harvest the lush regrowth of wild grass to provide an abundant local source of fodder feed for livestock.

These grass bundles can be stored and also sold to generate capital for other coop livelihood enterprises.

In their first harvest, the cooperative harvested 7,400 grass bundles from just 40 hectares, with an estimated value of 18,667 USD. Upon completing the harvesting of the remaining 396 hectares, revenue from sales could increase to approximately 136,000 USD.

With this new income stream, the coop has been able to invest in bull fattening (buying animals, increasing their weight and selling for a profit), securing a net profit of approximately 23,000 USD within a year. Profits from coop activities are being reinvested to develop diversified livelihood enterprises, with members receiving annual dividends.

The local community is also benefitting from the rebounding fish stocks, which has brought increased food security for local people and new economic opportunities in fishing.

A high return on investment

Perhaps most astonishing of all is the price tag for this restoration. The Mansa coop has required minimal start-up investment and has become self-sustaining within 18 months.

With the local community now respecting and enforcing grazing restrictions, the ecosystem has rebounded naturally and rapidly with little additional intervention.

The success at Abijatta-Shalla showcases what can be achieved by acknowledging and channelling the powerful relationship between human beings and their ecosystems.

We can’t protect our ecosystems without considering the livelihood needs of the people that rely on them. We can’t improve human livelihoods without protecting the ecosystems they rely on. When these are jointly planned and jointly executed, we unlock a powerful force for change.

It’s Time to take climate action that recognises the interdependence of people and the planet.

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Shewit Emmanuel leads the Farm Africa team in Ethiopia. With more than 15 years of experience, she has worked for the UN, DFID, civil society organisations and public and private clients, leading large teams on complex and large transformational engagements.

The Abijatta-Shalla restoration project is part of Farm Africa’s Nature-based Solutions for Sustainable and Inclusive Development programme, funded by Sida.

Read more about the Abijatta-Shalla restoration project, and hear the story as told by Mansa cooperative members, in our latest project report: