Poverty and Land Degradation in Ethiopia: How to Reverse the Spiral?

Land degradation is one of the major causes of low and in many places declining agricultural productivity and continuing food insecurity and rural poverty in Ethiopia. Achieving sustainable pathways out of the downward spiral of land degradation and poverty requires that farmers adopt profitable and sustainable land management practices, or pursue alternative livelihood strategies that are less demanding of the land resource. Although there has been a great deal of effort to address land degradation problems in Ethiopia, these have failed to reverse the downward spiral in much of the worst affected areas of the country. Part of the reason for this has been the promotion of practices and technologies that were not well suited to the conditions facing farmers in their particular location, and hence not profitable or excessively risky. Recent research has shown that other factors—such as population pressure and small farm sizes, land tenure insecurity, land redistribution, limited access to credit, limited education, and others—also inhibit adoption of sustainable land management practices in some areas. However, the impacts of such factors are very context-specific, making generalized prescriptions ineffective.