The problem
Soil erosion, deforestation and destruction of grazing lands are damaging ecosystems across eastern Africa.
Widespread land degradation and disruptions to water flow are driving wildlife populations into decline and threatening the livelihoods of rural communities.
Climate change is making the situation worse, as increased temperatures, reduced rainfall and extreme weather events contribute to land degradation and cause crop failures and livestock losses.
Rural communities lack access to the expertise, materials, finance and markets they need to adapt.
The opportunity
Finding ways to make conservation activities profitable helps rural people protect and restore land, forests and water systems while improving their livelihoods at the same time.
Implementing practices that protect ecosystems can enhance soil health and water conservation and reduce dependency on chemical inputs, leading to more sustainable and productive agriculture.
The outcome
Restoring ecosystems in partnership with local communities breaks the cycle of destruction. This approach creates new income-generating opportunities for local communities, such as through ecotourism or sustainable harvesting of non-timber forest products.
Sustainable livelihood opportunities nurture ecosystems. Farms become more productive, water supplies more stable, forests more biodiverse, grazing lands more fertile and wildlife more abundant.
That increases resilience to climate change, not just for people living locally, but for the planet we all share.
How we protect ecosystems
Farm Africa works in partnership with local people to protect ecosystems by:
- Helping communities develop landscape-scale management plans, so that improvements in one area don’t have negative impacts elsewhere.
- Establishing community-led cooperatives to manage local forests and rangelands, with bylaws to back them up.
- Helping people who protect local ecosystems, such as by planting trees on their farms, tap into schemes like carbon credits, so they can earn income from their efforts.
- Developing enterprises for natural products like forest coffee, spices and honey to give an economic incentive to protect nature.
- Providing training on climate-smart agriculture so farmers can earn more while increasing their resilience to erosion, drought and flooding.
- Supporting farmers to boost productivity of their crops and herds of livestock, rather than clearing forests for agricultural expansion and grazing.
- Promoting beekeeping to encourage the planting and protection of trees and help reverse the decline in the number of bees, which play a crucial role in pollination and maintaining biodiversity.
- Supporting people to explore sustainable alternatives to forest-sourced fuelwood and timber.
The latest on protecting ecosystems
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Related resources
How gender norms impact women’s role in forest use and forest management – illustrations from Ethiopia’s Bale Ecoregion
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Ethiopia
Key focus areas
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How gender norms impact women’s role in forest use and forest management – illustrations from Ethiopia’s Bale Ecoregion
Involving rural communities is important for effective forest conservation, however, women are often excluded from playing an active role in forest-related decision-making, despite the high dependency of rural women on forest products such as fuelwood and non-timber forest products and clear evidence that women’s participation in forest management groups can result in better resource governance and conservation outcomes. This paper unravels the gender relations in rural forest dependent communities in Ethiopia by taking a closer look at the country’s Bale Ecoregion, located in the Oromia regional state.
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Ethiopia
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Reviving nature’s symphony: the triumph of participatory rangeland management in transforming a degraded landscape
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Reviving nature’s symphony: the triumph of participatory rangeland management in transforming a degraded landscape
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Eco-tourism opportunity in Ilu Ababor Ethiopia
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