Authority warns of the gravity of environmental degradation in Ethiopia

 By Melaku Demissie

Ethiopian Reporter, December 1, 2004

The Ethiopian Environmental Protection Authority disclosed last week that the scale of environmental degradation was particularly grave in Ethiopia, and the country was suffering from massive land degradation.

In connection with a meeting on clarifications on Ethiopia's compliance with the Global Environment facility small grants programme, the authority clearly put that the degradation was manifested in the form of losses of vegetation cover, losses of biodiversity, soil fertility depletion in agricultural lands, massive soil erosion, disruption of hydrolic regime which resulted in drying up of rivers, streams and springs during dry season and severe desertification process, and its ecological and socio-economic consequence.

According to the authority, the consequence of environmental degradation were particularly serious in Ethiopia. As access to environmental resources declined, the means of livelihood of the rural communities were undermined. That was basically due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of the population earns its livelihood from agricultural activities.

The authority indicated that the agriculture sector in Ethiopia depended completely  on environmental resources. The livelihood of the great majority of the Ethiopian population, therefore, directly or indirectly depended on the productivity of these resources.

It said that environmental degradation, by undermining the livelihood opportunities, was contributing to the exacerbation of extreme poverty with consequent poor quality of life for millions of people. "The ever-escalating poverty situation in the country, in turn, presents a serious threat to the environmental resources of the country."

Ethiopia is party to various multilateral environmental agreements. Various national policies, strategies and programmes had been formulated and were being implemented to counter the impact of the prevailing environmental challenges in the country. However, it said, the effort was being handicapped by capacity limitation and overstreching of limited resource among competing demands.

"We trust that the impoverishment of the environment and its on- going adverse consequences can be significantly reduced through appropriate community empowerment interventions for local sustainable development activities," it added. In this context, the Global Environmental Facility small grant programme was a unique opportunity and will have a tremendous contribution in supporting and promoting community-level initiatives that help address global environmental challenges, adding that it was also expected that the community-level activities would have greater impact as it defused to neighboring communities.