The Cost of Land Degradation in Ethiopia : A Review of Past Studies
2007
World Bank
This paper reviews past studies on the costs of land degradation in Ethiopia, with a view to drawing implications for policies, programs, and future research on sustainable land management (SLM). Given the wide range of methods and assumptions used in the studies, their findings concerning annual costs of land degradation relative to agricultural gross domestic product (AGDP) are of remarkably similar magnitude. The minimum estimated annual costs of land degradation in Ethiopia range from 2 to 3 percent of AGDP. This estimate does not take into account downstream effects such as flooding, suggesting that actual total costs are possibly much higher than the 2-3 percent range. A onetime occurrence of a 2-3 percent reduction in AGDP might be manageable, but the cumulative losses to land degradation over time are very serious for an agriculturally based economy. Such cumulative losses represent a significant drag on rural growth and poverty reduction and jeopardize long-term, sustainable development.
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