Reducing Land Degradation and Carbon Loss from Ethiopia's Soils to Strengthen Livelihoods and Resilience, 2019-2024

Phimister, Euan and Moges, Awdenegest and Argaw, Thomas Lemma and Watson, Verity and Gebreab, Yitna (2025). Reducing Land Degradation and Carbon Loss from Ethiopia's Soils to Strengthen Livelihoods and Resilience, 2019-2024. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Service. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-857962

Land degradation is a major problem in Ethiopia. Recent estimates put the size of degraded land in Ethiopia at more than one-quarter of the entire country, which affects nearly a third of the population. Land degradation takes many forms and has many different effects, with the most adverse impacts on poor people, who depend heavily on natural resources. Forests, soils, water, biodiversity, and economic and social services derived from the ecosystems are all affected. Climate change and extreme weather events, such as the recent El Niño effect, significantly increase the risk of soil erosion, and losses of soil nutrients.

The impact of degradation and measures to restore land are inherently unequally distributed across the population in time and space. Restoring degraded common lands through the establishment of "exclosure" areas where traditional community access is restricted is widely used in Ethiopia. These restrictions particularly affect those without access to other sources of firewood and grazing. Such inequalities and local perceptions of justice need to be taken into account if soil restoration is to be sustainable in the long run.

This project aims to improve the design of measures to combat land degradation while considering equity and justice, strengthening risk management and benefits for communities, particularly poor and marginal groups, increasing the capacity of local people to adapt and improve their lives.

The project draws on an interdisciplinary approach covering anthropology, agricultural and forestry science, economics, environmental modelling, hydrology, sociology, and soil science. In case study areas within the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Region in Ethiopia (SNNPR) covering different agricultural and climatic zones, the project will design interventions with the Ethiopian Bureau of Agriculture to
- Train and provide access to exclosures to selected eligible landless youth and women to enable them to undertake new productive activities in 1) beekeeping or 2) livestock management.
- Demonstrate and train local farmers in simple measures to address gully formation

The research aims to find out the impact of the new interventions on the participants, how the interventions were communicated and promoted within the communities, how they were experienced by different groups, and their impact on preferences and attitudes to natural resource management within the community.

The project will collect soil, hydrology and socio-economic data. This will be used with environmental and economic modelling to measure the impacts of the interventions on the direct participants, and preferences for natural resource management in the wider community, and the potential long-term effects on land degradation, thus helping to improve the design local natural resource management.

With local and regional practitioners, development agents and representatives of local communities, the project will draw together all the results of the research to develop recommendations for improving frameworks to planning land degradation measures aligned to communities' aspirations, values and notions of justice.

Data description (abstract)

Two household surveys conducted in February/March 2021 (baseline) and February/March 2023 (endline) in Southern Ethiopia in localities (kebeles) where land was judged to be highly degraded. The endline survey aimed to collect data from the same set of households (and respondents) as in the baseline survey. The data collected included a discrete choice experiment (DCE)on preferences over local community choices on land management, experience and attitudes to land degradation, plus demographic, land use and livelihood information. The second survey also collected information on knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour with respect to different types of gully interventions.
The data collected was designed to allow specific interventions to be evaluated. In two treatment kebele the Ethiopian Bureau of Agriculture provided resources to selected groups to enable them to undertake new productive activities in beekeeping, sheep and oxen rearing drawing on the resources of local “exclosure areas”. Data was collected both from these areas in the surveys plus in two control districts. In addition, in one kebele on-farm field experiments on low-cost gully rehabilitation measures were undertaken and demonstrated to the community.

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