CHILIMO, Ethiopia (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Ethiopia is enlisting the cooperation of people in and around its forests to manage woodland better, hoping to protect the country from the effects of climate change while boosting development prospects for its population of 100 million.
Its Climate Resilient Green Economy strategy aims to meet half of its target reduction in carbon emissions by adding 5 million hectares (12.4 million acres) of forests by 2020 – just three years from now – and restoring 22 million hectares of degraded landscapes by 2030.
Under the program, local community cooperatives have been given the right to protect and manage the forest, which faces encroaching population pressure and illegal logging, and decide on how to use the benefits accrued from it.
He said the community’s decision to help preserve the Chilimo reserve is the result of seeing the problems other communities have faced after destroying their forests.
Stephen Danyo, an expert in natural resources management with the World Bank’s Ethiopia office, said the forestry management scheme aims not just to secure incomes for local communities but to protect water resources for downstream communities as well.
Moges said protecting forests would also help ensure more stable harvests by protecting water supplies – a major concern in a country where the government says 7.8 million Ethiopians face food shortages as a result of climate change-related drought and land degradation.
Woldegiorgis, on the other hand, thinks tougher punishments for illegal loggers in the Chilimo Forest Reserve are needed.
Moges also thinks some of Ethiopia’s rural population needs to move to its cities to better protect forests and other land as the country’s population expands.
More than 80 percent of the country’s population lives in rural areas, adding to the pressure on forests, he said.
“A prosperous Ethiopia is one that protects its forest resources.