Environmental degradation and the deterioration of the natural resource base have become serious problems in Ethiopia. The existing biophysical, environmental and socio-economic indicators provide sufficient testimonies for the severity of the problem of natural resources deterioration in Ethiopia. Most forms of the nation’s environmental problems are directly or indirectly attributable to the rapid dwindling of the country’s vegetation cover and the consequent degradation of its land resource. To combat this problem national level environmental conservation and rehabilitation efforts were started in the 1970s, with particular focus on the fast deteriorating highland areas of the country. Closing degraded land areas from human and livestock intervention to promote natural regeneration of plants, commonly termed as exclosures, is among the major conservation efforts practiced in the highland areas of Tigray, northern Ethiopia. The introduction of this policy has brought major changes in land use in Tigray. Land areas formerly used as grazing land, bush lands, wood lands, and even some crop lands were converted to forestry. These were areas where local people generate lots of economic benefits (such as source of grazing; fodder collection; fuelwood; and other wood and non-wood products). This land use conversion limits the harvest of environmental products by local people due to the adoption of restrictive use rules. As a result, local people have encountered losses of economic benefits and welfare. These have led many local residents to view such a land use policy change as a less favoured land use option. On the other hand, local government and non-government agencies in favour of exclosures strongly argue for the desirability of exclosures in terms of the ecological functions and long-run economic benefits. With respect to exclosures, several knowledge gaps arise: (1) the local costs of establishing exclosures and economic welfare loss emanating from access restriction have not been quantified and as a result little has been known about the economic contribution of environmental resource use in the welfare of rural people, (2) the factors that condition rural households’ heavy dependence on ‘natural extraction’ have not been systematically identified, (3) the ecological services provided by the vegetation restoration in exclosures and the tradeoffs of alternative land use options have not been quantified and valued in order to give economic justification for such land use conversion, and (4) sustainable management of the closed areas has become a serious practical problem. Sustainability criteria and indicators, their relative importance, and areas that need special attention for efficient and effective interventions have not been critically identified. Therefore, this study aimed at contributing to the existing stock of knowledge on the economic importance of environmental resource use to rural livelihoods; the trade-offs in terms of economic values (costs and benefits) associated with converting existing land use types to forestry; and the sustainable management of community owned natural resource systems. This may foster economic rationality among decision makers and the general public in land allocation for various uses and for sustainable management of closed areas. It would also provide important inputs to policy makers and insights into resource management options and livelihood strategies. The thesis has four core chapters (chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5). With the help of empirical data from 360 randomly sampled rural households from 12 villages in Tigray, chapter 2 examines the role of forest environmental products in the wellbeing of rural households and compares the value of environmental goods with other household economic activities. We found that income from environmental sources occupies the second largest share in average total household income next to crop income. The poverty and inequality analyses show that incorporating environmental incomes in household accounts contribute significantly to the reduction in measured rural poverty and income inequality. Using the ‘livelihood approach’ as an analytical framework and multinomial logit (MNL) regression method, the determinants of households’ livelihood activity choice and their reliance on environmental extraction were identified in chapter 3. The MNL regression analyses indicate that heterogeneity in access to livelihood assets determines the choice of a household's livelihood strategy. Thus, targeted interventions in enhancing the positions of asset-poor households need to be introduced in order to mitigate local pressure on natural environment and improve the economic wellbeing of local people without hampering the resource base. By integrating the available data on on-site and off-site effects of exclosures (i.e. the effects on soil erosion, biomass production, sedimentation, crop yield, and opportunity cost of land and labour) chapter 4 undertakes an economic analysis of the soil and water conservation effects of exclosures using the model of cost-benefit analysis. Key benefit and cost items were identified, quantified, and valued. Direct market prices and variants of indirect techniques (i.e. replacement cost method, productivity change method, and damage cost avoided) of environmental valuation were used to value the various benefit and cost items. Our alternative scenario analyses indicate that establishing exclosures in degraded land has a positive net present value (NPV). However, converting productive agricultural land to forestry yields a negative NPV even under some hypothetical scenarios of overestimated values of forest products and a low social discount rate. Thus, land conversion to forestry or other land use changes should be carefully analyzed and justified in economic terms before introducing the proposed land use change. Using the general procedure of multi-criteria analysis (MCA), chapter 5 analyzes the sustainable management of community owned natural resources (with particular focus on community forestry). Three variants of MCA methods (ranking, pair-wise comparisons, and scoring) were used. Our analyses indicate that the performance of the prevailing resource management system is poor. Thus, the application of ‘traditional environmental management packages’ in Ethiopia which commonly pays due attention to the ecological aspects alone has to be substituted by research-based holistic management prescriptions. In order to harmonize both developmental and environmental objectives, locally relevant sets of criteria and indicators of sustainability should be carefully identified and evaluated from the local perspectives.
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