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Towards a draft national restoration strategy for Ethiopia
Ethiopia - 26 August, 2021
Professionals committed to the development of Ethiopia’s drylands gathered again in Addis Ababa, for the start of a three-day meeting as part of their mission ‘Towards a draft national restoration strategy’. The Ethiopia Dryland Restoration Platform (EDRP) was formed in April at the national workshop on ‘Dryland restoration and dry forest management - Sharing knowledge to meet local needs and national commitments’, when a Declaration was made on a joint commitment to work towards a national dryland restoration strategy.
The 40-strong team includes representatives from federal government, universities, NGOs, and from the six main dryland regions: Afar, Amhara, Benishangul-Gumuz, Oromia, Somali and Tigray. The aim – to provide further inputs into the development of a national dryland strategy through the lenses of four thematic areas: livelihoods and markets, sustainable natural resource management, land tenure and governance, policy alignment and knowledge management. The teams will then bring thematic and regional perspectives together into a first draft strategy by the end of Saturday 28 August.
Task teams will then deliberate, and plan to meet again in November to finalize the strategy, that will then be validated and presented to the Ethiopia Forest and Climate Change Commission (EFCCC) in January 2022.
This workshop and the Ethiopia Dryland Restoration Platform is convened by PENHA (the Pastoral and Environmental Network in the Horn of Africa), a regional NGO with offices in London, Hargeisa and Addis Ababa, in partnership with TBI (Tropenbos International), a non-governmental network organization with headquarters in the Netherlands. PENHA is TBI’s implementing partner in Ethiopia for its Working Landscape programme, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
PENHA have been active in the Greater Horn region for more than 30 years (www.penhanetwork.org). Recent contributions to drylands work by TBI includes the Restoring African Drylands book (ETFRN news 60: Restoring African Drylands - Tropenbos International) published in December 2020 (also in French). See www.tropenbos.org/resources for this and many related publications.
For further information, contact:
Amsale Shibeshi, Regional programmes coordinator, PENHA, Somaliland/Ethiopia
amsale.shibeshi@penhasom.org, +251 93 0800881, +252 63 4416203 (Whatsapp)
Nick Pasiecznik, Dryland restoration coordinator, Tropenbos International, the Netherlands nick.pasiecznik@tropenbos.org, +33 782626917 (Whatsapp)