Forest landscape restoration in Northern Ethiopia

Recently, several members of WeForest’s HQ were able to visit our projects in Ethiopia for the first time since the conflict began in 2020. They were overwhelmed by the welcome given to them by the communities, who expressed their gratitude not only for WeForest’s efforts to provide seeds and other essentials to ensure the harvest, but also because the organization was one of the only NGOs that stayed in the region during the war. 

In Desa’a, planting season has already begun, thanks to the unusually early rains this year. Check out these inspiring videos of the communities preparing the landscape for planting here. 1 322 526 seedlings have been raised in the nurseries and so far 4463 ha of land has been brought under restoration management – about 50% of the target for this year.

In Gewocha, we finished an important milestone: the forest vegetation inventory. This essential step in any Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) project defines the characteristics of the forest to be restored, its composition, species diversity and regeneration status. As well as providing crucial input to inform decision-making and management of the subsequent restoration, it also provides a starting baseline by which the project’s success can be measured. 

To date, the Gewocha Forest project is supporting 1682 families to adopt agroforestry practices, growing cash crops like Rhamnus prinoides, Coffee arabica and fruit seedlings to boost their household incomes and food security. Habtamu A., a 35 year-old father of two, came back to his hometown of Finoteselam after working in Sudan and struggled to make a living as a masonry worker. With high-value fruit tree and vegetable seedlings and training from the Gewocha Forest project, he instead established this well-planned 0.25 ha agroforestry plot, which is already boosting his income with the equivalent of US $100 every week. He’s planted vegetables and fruit trees like banana, avocado and mango every five metres with coffee at two metre intervals between them, so the trees provide essential shade to the coffee plants. 

Thank you for helping to make all this possible! 

At the end of 2022 we were delighted to see a peace deal agreed in Tigray, and our team and the communities are cautiously optimistic for the rest of 2023 and the hope of stability and peace in the wider region after three years of war.

We are now over one-third of the way to restoring the 38 000 ha landscape in Desa’a. The eleven nurseries supported by WeForest are actively engaged in preparing seedbeds, seedling pots and sowing seeds for the next planting season (June to August 2023). They'll raise more than a million seedlings of eleven different species, of which at least 90% will end up being planted. This margin of error of 10% is absolutely normal, because a 100% survival rate against pests, disease, weather or other hazards is impossible even in the safety of a tree nursery.

Over in Amhara, 669.97 hectares were brought under restoration in our Gewocha Forest project in the 2022 planting season, higher than the original target of 652.9 hectares.  

The communities here are dependent on Gewocha Forest for their livelihoods, and poverty and food insecurity are prevalent in the area. The project promotes several forest-friendly livelihood activities to improve incomes and reduce pressure on the forest, the most important being agroforestry. 

In 2022, 100.02 hectares of agroforestry was established on 1682 homesteads, growing a total of 14 different species. This was well above the target of 1127 homesteads, due to a high interest within the community in agroforestry. These families were also provided with practical training. Other livelihoods here include beekeeping, livestock and dairy and horticulture.

Thank you for helping to make all this possible!

Hey there, 

I'm Liz, WeForest's Corporate Partnership Development Manager. I wanted to fill you in about some good news for our Northern Ethiopia projects, as well as letting you know about our plans for this year’s Giving Tuesday later in November. 

A truce has been reached in the Ethiopian civil war, with both sides agreeing to halt their two-year conflict. After thousands of deaths and near-famine conditions for 90% of people in northern Tigray, this is a glimmer of hope. 

Meanwhile, our Ethiopia team has been busy carrying out a survey of the households that will be involved with our new Gewocha Forest project with The Hunger Project. Baseline surveys like this one are carried out to determine the situation at the start of the project, and later ones help us measure the success of the forest-friendly livelihoods programmes we promote and support.  

This year, WeForest is participating in Giving Tuesday with GlobalGiving. This 24-hour campaign takes place on 29th November, a global day of giving celebrated by nonprofits, corporations, and donors alike! GlobalGiving is offering a $1,200,000 incentive fund to organizations who receive the most funding on the day so we're super excited to see what WeForest can achieve with your help.

Without your kind donations none of this would be possible, so thank you once again from all of us here at WeForest.

Links:

• BBC News report on the truce

In Desa’a, no one sits at home in the summer season! More than 75% of the participants in our tree planting programme are women, as men are busy in their fields securing the next grain harvest for their families. The most intensive planting takes place in the buffer zone, with light gap-filling done in the denser forest areas. At the start of the season, nearly 700k seedlings were ready in the nurseries for planting.

Our soil and water conservation structures are an essential part of planting. Aloe camperi is the best and most natural way to strengthen these structures in the dry Desa'a landscape. Its roots help bind together the stone bunds and trenches, and at the same time a valuable crop is being grown.

Our nurseries have already started seedling production for planting in 2023. All the native tree seedlings will be nurtured for more than one year in our nurseries to make sure that they will survive and grow well after planting in the field.

Over in Amhara, in our new Gewocha Forest project in Jabi-Tehnan district, the first planting season has started! Project Manager Adamu from The Hunger Project (pictured) demonstrated how to plant seedlings so the community members could follow suit. He showed how big the pit should be, and how we plant seedlings without damaging the roots. After planting, circular water harvesting structures need to be made and any weeds removed. The circular structures will protect the seedlings from any excess water during the rainy season and store water for future dry periods.

Habesha D., the village head of Hodansh, told us about how the community regrets the loss of their biodiversity because of their negligence and misuse of the forest resources by their antecedents. Now everyone is standing together to restore the landscape for a better future for their children. “Gewocha Forest gives us food, shade, water, feed for our livestock and bees, and much more," he says. "Now we are planting native trees to save it. It is not too late.”

Thank you for helping to make all this possible!

During 2021, we had planned to provide materials or stock for income-generating schemes to 1443 households in Tigray. Owing to the war and the resulting mobility restrictions and market closures, we were able to support only 46% of the households - but the good news is that the income that families are receiving from our livelihood improvement packages is increasing! 

Baseline data is collected from a minimum of 10% of the participants to monitor the impact of the schemes, and in 2021 this data was collected from a sample of participants who had been involved since 2018. Households who have achieved sales are receiving an average income up to 9315.49 ETB (about $207US) from poultry and sheep per year and 6550 ETB ($146US) from beekeeping! 

This very promising start is already a great boost in a region where the daily income is below US$1.9 per day for more than half of the families. Not only that, but individuals who started 2018 are getting more income in 2021 than those who started in 2019 and 2020, indicating that the income they got is increasing over time. This could be mainly from the increase in technical efficiency and marketable stock size.

Over in Amhara, as the project begins its scaling up in West Gojjam province (Jabi-Tehnan district), we’re continuing to monitor the planting that was done in the first phase in Machakel (East Gojjam). Vegetation inventories and household surveys of 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 were conducted, and survival rate was determined based on the permanent plots established in each respective year.

The target was to obtain a 80% seedling survival rate after 3 years for both communal and agroforestry areas. On communal restoration sites the result revealed an average survival rate of 92.8%! The inventory showed a higher survival rate of exotic species compared to indigenous species, with an average survival rate of 95.6% for exotic and 91.1% for indigenous species. The highest survival rate (98.5%) was registered for Acacia decurrens and the lowest (88.6%) – still high! – was for Faidherbia albida seedlings.

On agroforestry sites, the average survival rate of seedlings was 95.1%. The survival rate of native cash crop Rhamnus prinoides was highest (97%), followed by Olea europea (95.7%). Survival rates of 95.2%, 89.6%, 88.2%, and 86.9% were recorded for Coffea arabica, Cordia africana, Carica papaya and Sesbania sesban respectively.

These fantastic survival rates can be attributed to quality seedling production (healthy and vigorous), careful species selection for the local agro-ecological conditions, the suitability of the restoration sites, well-timed planting, good planting techniques and good seedling care, both during transportation and handling and on the sites after planting by protection from weeds and grazing.

Thank you for helping to make all this possible!