Development strategies in EthiopiaDevelopment strategies in Ethiopia
Costantinos Berhe Tesfu describes the activities of
the Environment and Development Society of
Ethiopia (LEM-Ethiopia).
THE HUMAN CRISIS we are confronted with in the Horn of Africa simply defeats imagination. It is a crisis tragically and glaringly manifested in the hardships of the people. Their sufferings are caused by, amongst other things, inappropriate and unsustainable exploitation of life support systems which is apparent in the incredible rate of loss of biomass cover, soil erosion, irregularity and lack of precipitation, climatic change and creeping desertification.
The region has become a tragic icon; continuously delving into unfathomable depths of despair and hopelessness for its children. The scale and intensity of desertification and the resulting environmental disasters have also been steadily increasing as measured in terms of the millions who have perished.
It is against this background and the emergence of new paradigms in the counter- desertification offensive and in sustainability that the Environment and Development Society of Ethiopia (LEM) was launched.
LEM is a civic association and advocacy group that promotes policy and legislative support to the issues of environment and development.
It also offers a voluntary development partnership of communities to translate the lofty ideas of a stable environment and sustainable livelihood security into everyday action.
Today, we feel more committed as we see LEM growing to strengthen and complement the work of grassroots organizational structures, regional, sub-regional and national initiatives in conservation-based development.
Inspired by the overall concept of sustainable development in achieving economic and social goals, our objectives are:
We at LEM have no intention of mystifying environment and development. Our main objective is to start with what people know already - and not to re-invent what people have practised for centuries.
LEM has three main directorates: environmental education and popular participation; programme planning and legislative/advocacy support; and support for field operations.
Strategic issues for LEM are listed in the accompanying box. Integration and people's participation are central to all the strategies. Participation implies local commitment, decisions, innovativeness and resource generation and that legitimate community organizations preside over the collective will and decisions of community members.
In this regard, primary aims are improvement of consumption and incomes; grassroots human resources development to promote environmental issues through awareness generation and training in disaster- preparedeness and prevention; and promoting the organizational development of communities to enhance and build up traditional coping mechanisms.
Land use strategies and strategic land-use plans must be formulated parallel to and/or precede reclamation and development in order to provide a basis for rational land use. This will include formulating procedures and guidelines for developing improved land-use patterns and practices at the community level and the establishment of a land register as a record in outline of existing land-use rights and as a basis for administering future changes, transfers and alienation.
Farm forestry is one of the simplest systems of enhancing productivity and is recommended for extensive adoption. The emphasis should not only be on tree-planting or afforestation per se but on adding trees to the agricultural landscape to ensure sustainable agriculture, effect erosion control, improve yields, develop pasture and forest, augment wood-resource bases and alleviate rural energy deficits.
The struggle to balance population with available natural resources should be a priority objective. This would require slowing and eventually stabilizing rapid population growth, finding settled, safe homes for "environmental refugees" and planning a safe future for increasing numbers of people. The need for a national population policy is imperative.
The main task of balancing immediate needs against those of future generations is one which requires considerable initiative as it has no objective moral yardstick.
The eradication of poverty, strongly linked to population and resource mismanagement, is the cornerstone of any strategy for sustainable development. With the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, the majority of the population cannot pursue alternative livelihoods outside the agricultural and livestock subsectors. Even so, while a large section of the population has to farm on marginal lands, the most productive areas are sometimes reserved for cash-crop production.
In Ethiopia, biotechnological processes are applied in various activities. In spite of the challenges and difficulties it entails, biotechnology enriches traditional processing of food, beverages, leather tanning and the preparation of traditional medicines. The development of "modern biotechnology" - the capacity to generate technology, to absorb the transfer of technology from other countries and to adopt and adapt these technologies - is still a preoccupation that has not taken firm ground.
The following activities summarize the current field programmes of LEM. Most of them, to be fully effective, are in need of additional funding.
Given the socio-economic and cultural setting of the country, the following are found to be the major foci of research with regard to women's participation:
Environmental Clubs can pursue their goals through one or all of the following activities:
The lion's share of the effort is to address the environmental rehabilitation and food production components. This entails, on a secondary basis, addressing the health care needs and improving the social services components. As most of the land is not put into production due to degradation, it is envisaged that substantial areas will be put under environmental reclamation.
LEM will assist this project in the capacity of advisory services from the pool of prominent expertize found in its membership. It will also assist in facilitating the community and concerned government-line ministries to achieve the overall project objectives.
Community participation will primarily rest with participation in all aspects of activities from need-identification through planning, implementing and self-evaluating the programme objectives.
On a secondary basis, the community will share resource contribution to the project. This may range from provision of free labour and supplementary labour to the provision of locally available materials, not to neglect the most valuable resource the community will supply land and rich endogenous knowledge of their environment. These contributions count as equivalent to, or even more than, the agency and donor contributors.
Finally, LEM is working on the possibility of being a focal point for the programme, "NGO Capacity-building on Desertification: Increasing the Policy, Analytical and Networking Capacities of NGOs in Africa on Desertification." LEM is also participating in the INCD process through contributions of publications and papers.