Sustainable land managment as key enabling elemernt to end poverty in Ethiopia: Gaps, Dichotomies and opportunities.

The tackling of land degradation and its effects in Ethiopia is hampered by dichotomized decades old misperceptions and a tendency to artificially demarcate the complex agro-ecological contexts of the country into classes such as "high potential' and "low potential" zones. These classifications have heavily influenced assistance to agricultural development, extension services, food security and poverty reduction. High potential areas have been associated with "bread baskets" and limited attention has been to the devastating effects of accelerated land degradation in those areas. The low potential areas have been associated with food insecurity and drought, building the wrong perception of non-economical investments and a culture of a "lost cause" in some areas. The majority of investments in conservation efforts occurred in food-insecure areas. Although not sufficient and in real terms only covering a small portion of these areas, they built the perception of "heavy support and coverage". This paper argues that most of these perceptions are wrong and therefore need to be discussed and revisited based upon solid ground evidence. The aim is to be able to come to terms with the magnitude of the land degradation problem in Ethiopia and enable Sustainable Land Management (SLM) practices to expand through the entire country. SLM is not a panacea, but a binding element that should form the enabling development platform for Ethiopia.SLM need to be built upon a wealth of indigenous and viable exogenous practices and improved technologies that have proven to be effective in Ethiopia. Such experience abounds and needs to be acknowledged and scaled up, moving away from technical simplifications such as "physical versus biological measures" and others. Furthermore, grater flexibility should be allowed in the use of various forms of incentives, currently subject to restrictions, for SLM on private lands. SLM will need to build upon best practices but also on the promising steps and opportunities provided through the land use certification process and the recent adoption of a community based participatory watershed development approach for conservation-based agriculture. Suggestion is also made for an overall SLM framework for Ethiopia to be developed by a consortium of stakeholders building upon local strengths, best practices, knowledge and valuable experience (indigenous and exogenous). This will create an agreed denominator in the development equation for Ethiopia and enable partners to act in unison upon SLM, food security and related growth issues.