Suchergebnisse

In Awulachew, Seleshi Bekele; Loulseged, Makonnen; Yilma, Aster Denekew (Comps.). Impact of irrigation on poverty and environment in Ethiopia: draft proceedings of the symposium and exhibition, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 27-29 November 2007. Colombo, Sri Lanka: International Water Management Institute (IWMI). ; The regional government of Tigray has invested in millions of Birr to develop irrigation schemes as a strategy of poverty reduction. The study was based on a representative sample of 613 farm households (331 irrigators and 282 non-irrigators) drawn using three stage stratified sampling with probability proportional to size. The main aim of this paper is to study the impact of irrigation on household income, therefore, to contribute to the scant literature on irrigation-poverty reduction nexus in Ethiopia, which policy makers can use it as an input to make informed policy decisions in their future endeavors. We found that farming income is more important to irrigating households than to non-irrigating households, while off-farm income is negatively related with access to irrigation. We also found that irrigating households? average income is above the regional average, while non-irrigating households? average income is 50 percent less than the average income of irrigating households. Although there can be other factors, which may contribute to the difference in income, these results are in line with our expectation and supports the decision of the Tigray government to use irrigation as a poverty reduction tool. We have used a stochastic dominance analysis and found that the results are consistent. This result differs from a previous study by Pender et al. (2002), which argues that irrigation has less impact in agricultural yields than expected, reducing returns to investment in modern irrigation.

Land degradation is a critical problem around the world. Intensive rain-fed and irrigated crop and livestock systems have contributed to the degradation of land and natural resources. Numerous institutional and socioeconomic challenges complicate attempts to reverse land degradation, including the lack of short-term incentives for investment; low investment by communities in natural resources management that offers little immediate financial reward; failure of public sector institutions to invest sufficiently in natural resources management because of low, immediate political rewards; and sectoral fragmentation, among others. In poor communities, the incentive to extract short-term economic returns from land and natural resources often outweighs perceived benefits from investing in long-term environmental restoration, and related economic and ecosystem returns. Restoring degraded ecosystems through the establishment of exclosures – areas that are excluded from woodcutting, grazing and agricultural activities – is an increasingly common practice in the Ethiopian Highlands, and regional states are also following this practice. This report proposes and applies an adapted business model to explore the feasibility of exclosures for land restoration. It aims to identify short-term revenue streams from activities that can be carried out within exclosures, such as beekeeping, harvesting fodder for livestock fattening, and cultivating high-value plant species, including fruits and herbs. These are feasible, sustainable economic activities that could allow for the restoration of ecosystem services over the long term. Mobilization of financial resources, engagement of local communities, provision of training and continuous follow-up, as well as facilitation of market opportunities in the value chain for local communities and enterprises (e.g., creating market linkages and establishing innovation platform to engage with market actors) could support the sustainable implementation of the revenue streams.

The regional government of Tigray has invested millions of dollars to develop irrigation schemes as a strategy of poverty reduction. However, there has been limited attempt to analyze whether these investments have attained their stated objectives of poverty reduction and overall socio-economic enhancement. Therefore, we endeavor to: (1) evaluate the impacts of access to small-scale irrigation on farm household's income and poverty status, (2) contribute to the scant literature on irrigation and poverty reduction in Ethiopia, and (3) provide information for policy makers. We examine a representative sample of 613 farm households (331 irrigators and 282 non-irrigators) drawn using three-stage stratified sampling with Probability Proportional to Size. We find that the average income of non-irrigating households is less than that of the irrigating households by about 50%. The overall average income gain due to access to irrigation ranges from 4000 Birr to 4500 Birr per household per annum. We find also that farming income is more important to irrigating households than to non-irrigating households, and off-farm income is negatively related with access to irrigation.

In the Blue Nile Basin of Ethiopian highlands, rainfall distribution is extremely uneven both spatially and temporally. Drought frequently results in crop failure, while high rainfall intensities result in low infiltration and high runoff causing soil erosion and land degradation. These combined factors contribute to low agricultural productivity and high levels of food insecurity. Poor land management practices coupled with lack of effective rainwater management strategies aggravate the situation. Over the past two decades, however, the Government of Ethiopia has attempted to address many of these issues through a large-scale implementation of a number of soil and water conservation measures. Despite the success of interventions, uptake and adoption remains low. The conceptual framework of this study is based on the premise that farmers are more likely to adopt a combination of rainwater management technologies as adaptation mechanism against climate variability and agricultural production constraints. This contrasts the previous work that typically examined a single technology without considering the interdependence between technologies. Data used in this study come from household survey in seven watersheds in the Ethiopian Blue Nile Basin. A multivariate probit model was used to account for the potential correlation and interdependence of various components of rainwater management technologies. Our results suggest that rainwater management technologies are related with each other; hence, any effort to promote the adoption of rainwater management technologies has to consider such interdependence of technologies, or failure to do so may mask the reality that farmers face a set of choices in their adoption decisions.

Sustainable participatory watershed management is an approach promoted by the Ethiopian government to restore natural resources and agricultural productivity across the country. This comparative study between six watershed programs shows that this approach increases farmers' food security and incomes (around 50% on average), as well as their resilience to drought and other climate shocks. However, the study also confirms that the nature and scale of impact can vary significantly between watershed programs. The success of watershed management depends on multiple factors from the hydrological profile of the watershed to the local social and economic environment. Tailoring watershed interventions to the local context, associating conservation and livelihoods activities, and providing further financial and technical support to watershed committees are among the recommendations of this paper.

The government of Ethiopia has invested in groundwater development for smallholder irrigation in the Raya Valley and Kobo Valley, north-eastern Ethiopia, where the hydrogeological potential is large but not fully developed. A cost-benefit analysis shows that investment in deep groundwater irrigation development is viable at a 9.5% discount rate in 75% of the wells. Assuming full cost recovery of capital investment, the annual payment rates (annuity) that irrigation users should pay over the wells' service life (25 years) were estimated. It is recommended that future investment be based on cost sharing rather than full cost recovery to facilitate uptake and address financial realities.

Agriculture is the main sector of the Ethiopian economy, as is the case in many sub-Saharan African countries. In this region, rainfall distribution is extremely uneven both spatially and temporally. Drought frequently results in crop failure, while high rainfall intensities result in low infiltration and high runoff, causing soil erosion and land degradation, which contribute to low agricultural productivity and high levels of food insecurity. High population growth and cultivation of steep and marginal lands, together with poor land management practices and lack of effective rainwater management strategies, aggravate the situation. Over the past two decades, the Government of Ethiopia has attempted to address these issues through the large-scale implementation of a range of soil and water conservation measures, including stone terraces, soil bunds and area enclosures. Despite these efforts, adoption of the interventions remains low. Studies from the Ethiopian Highlands show that the adoption of rainwater management technologies is influenced by a variety of factors, including biophysical characteristics such as topography, slope, soil fertility, rainfall amount and variability. However, even when technologies are appropriate to a particular biophysical setting, they may not be implemented, because farmers usually consider a variety of factors when making their decisions to adopt technologies. Thus, gaining an understanding of the factors that influence the adoption of rainwater management technologies is crucial for improved management of land and water resources. In this context, this study has been carried out within the framework of the Nile Basin Development Challenge (NBDC) project of the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), which aims to improve rural livelihoods and their resilience through a landscape approach to rainwater management in the Ethiopian part of the Blue Nile River Basin.