Ethiopia: Deforestation: Difference between revisions

Ethiopia: Deforestation (view source)

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 * '''War and conflict.''' As was clear from the brief modern history of Ethiopia above, Ethiopia and its people have had to contend with the mayhem caused almost constant conflict throughout much of the 20th century and even into the early 21st century thanks to its attempted colonisation by the Italians and then decades of either repression of Eritrea following its annexation or open internecine warfare triggered by the Marxist putsch of 1974, and then border wars with the newly independent Eritrea at the close of last century. Not only have those wars killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of people, but they have also led to the destruction or undermining of national infrastructure and institutions that regulated and policed natural resource use, including forests, disrupted traditional forest husbandry and commercial activities based on cultivation of forest products, reduced local populations to extreme poverty so that they are forced to exploit land and forest resources far beyond their natural capacity to regenerate themselves, and contributed to devastating droughts that seriously eroded forestry ecosystems.
 * '''Sources of fuel.''' In a low technology and poverty-stricken society like Ethiopia, the main source of fuel for cooking and heat is wood or charcoal made from wood. Combined with population increase, the result has been widespread felling of timber and hence forest clearance.
-* '''Low technological agriculture.'''
+* '''Low technological agriculture.''' Animal dung tends to be used as fuel in times of scarcity and stress (caused by war or drought) when it should be used as a fertiliser on cultivated land, so that it quickly loses its fertility and forces encroachment on to forested areas. In addition, as agricultural technology was slow to develop in Africa, systems were perpetuated that relied on slash-and-burn cultivation.
+* '''Cash cropping and logging.''' On the other hand, in some areas industrial-style agriculture was introduced to supply export markets for cash for fund modernisation projects, e.g.coffee, resulting in the clearing of large areas of forest and the introduction of intensive, often non-sustainable agricultural practices. Commercial logging with little government oversight or regulation also leads to loss of forest cover.
+* '''Misdirected foreign aid and de-emphasis of indigenous knowledge.''' This goes hand-in-hand with the rise of cash cropping, as well-intentioned aid foreign programmes and World Bank-imposed Structural Adjustment Programmes have laid stress on modernising the Ethiopian economy and incorporating it into the global economy through the farming of monocultural crops for world markets, such as the aforementioned coffee, and cereal crops for export. This has again led to forest clearance for fresh fertile land that is in many cases quickly exhausted without the liberal application of chemical fertilisers. The same process also tends to de-emphasise customary agricultural and forestry practices though which some equilibrium between livelihood, environmental sustainability and resource exploitation was maintained in the past.
+* '''Distance from markets.''' As a result of the long years of violent conflict, there has been a total lack of investment in the infrastructure that would support more sustainable use of forest resources by local communities. For example, the lack of development means there there are few roads and hence easy access to markets to sell forest products. The result is on-going poverty in the most inaccessible regions and hence over-exploitation of forest resources for the basic needs of survival.
+* '''Over-exploitation of NTFPs.''' Whether for subsistence or commercial purposes, some argue that intense harvesting of NTFPs is feasible because of supposedly low associated ecological impacts, exaggerated extraction of forest products can a negative impact on the population dynamics of the plants being exploited. Such impacts may lead to changes in the forest community structure. The impact depends on the parts of plants that are harvested in NTFPs. Harvesting of some NTFPs like leaves and fruits, may have a negligible effect on the plant population being exploited, depending on the intensity of the harvest. Harvesting of bark, roots or bulbs, however, usually kills or fatally weakens the plant species used. For other products, such as palm heart, trees have to be cut to be able to harvest the product. An important group of NTFP in East Africa is gums and resins or Acaica, Boswellia and Commiphora species that produce gum Arabic, frankincense and myrrh. [Bishaw]
+* '''Land ownership.''' Ethiopia has seen a number of changes in land ownership, which continue to provide uncertainty to the farmer and to rural communities. The land use system is associated with the decrease in the size of holdings both for arable and grazing lands. Thus there is a continued trend toward the conversion of forested and marginal lands to agricultural lands, resulting in massive environmental degradation and a serious threat to sustainable agriculture and forestry. [Bishaw] Before 1974 about half of the forestland was privately owned or claimed, and approximately half was held by the government. There was next to no government control of forestry operations prior to the revolution. The l975 land reform under the Derg nationalised forestland and sawmills, which were concentrated in the south. The government controlled harvesting of forestland, and in some cases individuals had to obtain permits from local peasant associations to cut trees. But this measure encouraged illegal logging and expedited the destruction of Ethiopia's forests. [Ofcansky & Berry]
 == Resources ==