About Debre Birhan:

Poverty and land degradation blight the North Shewa Zone in the Amhara Region of central Ethiopia, where the District of Basona Werana, housing the ‘woreda’ of Debre Birhan, is located.

The majority of the 67,000 people who live in Debre Birhan are subsistence farmers who live below the poverty line. Land is severely degraded due to the heavy dependence on agriculture for livelihoods. Rainfall is low, increasing the challenges smallholder farmers face.

The problem:

With a growing population, the land is cropped and grazed ever more intensively. Consequently, trees disappear from the landscape and the soil is vulnerable to erosion. As firewood becomes harder to find, villagers become increasingly reliant on dung and crop residue for fuel, meaning that these are no longer used to fertilise the soil.

Soil fertility deteriorates as a result, and subsistence farmers are increasingly struggling to produce enough food. The impact on local communities is massive, forcing many young people, especially men, to migrate to towns and cities in search of work.

Our approach:

Our Forests For Food Project works with our partner, the Ethiopia Wildlife and Natural History Society (EWNHS) to replace lost tree cover, conserve soils and water, and open up new opportunities for generating income in Debre Birhan. Local people are learning how to use trees to improve farm production and to meet their most immediate needs for fuel and food.

Since the project started in 2006 we have planted nearly 500,000 trees to restore the degraded environment and to meet household needs. Many of the trees planted are fruit trees, which families appreciate as they generate nutritious food and can also form the basis of a small business.

Training is provided in nursery management and seedling production, enabling farmers to establish their own nurseries. More than 400 people have received this training so far. Nurseries will generate income for families and ensure that tree planting will continue once the project is complete.

Since finding fuel for cooking is such a challenge, the project provides fuel-saving stoves so that more organic matter can be used to fertilise the soil, rather than being burned. Nearly 200 of these have been distributed to families thus far and we will distribute a total of 500.

The project has become a member of the Climate Change Forum in Debre Birhan town to help the woreda become more aware of climate change problems in the region and in the country as a whole and to develop solutions together. The successes of the project have influenced the government of Ethiopia to draw up a plan to produce 300 million more seedlings around Debre Birhan.

“The issue of highland fruits is a completely new phenonmenon in our area. The training we got on how to plant and tend highland fruits is very helpful, as it will encourage us to be involved in growing such fruit trees as an alternative income generation scheme to subsist our livelihoods.” Ababayehu Agonafir