Synthesis of Ethiopia’s NDC and national polices with focus on agriculture and land use

Ethiopia is currently on the road to become a middle-income country by 2025, while not exceeding their 2010 GHG emissions. With 80% of the population engaged in agriculture, land-use management is essential to succeed in this emissions target. There have been several Ethiopian climate plans and policies over the last decade to promote a green development, and they have been condensed and streamlined over time. The progress has been hard to evaluate, mainly due to poor data availability, and where data is available the benchmarks and indicators have not been consistent over time, making it very difficult to get a fair picture of the situation. GHG emissions have decreased over time since 1990, but so has also the forest cover in the country, which acts as a carbon sink. The problem with this data is that the benchmark used in the Ethiopian evaluation is widely different from the FAO forest cover estimate. While Ethiopia reports great progress in their 2010 Growth National Plan (GTP) of 50 percent increased forest cover over a five-year period, FAO estimates the increase in the same period to close to two percent. Other than forest cover, crop production is another indicator that has available data over time, and here the outcome has been aligned with the goal set in the GTP. To reach the goal of reducing emissions down to the 2010 levels, financing seems to be the largest problem. There is a great deficit in the planned budget, and the projected increase in the private sector’s contribution has not been realized as of yet. As a result, it seems unlikely that the goal will be met, but Ethiopia is still taking big strides to becoming a green economy and have achieved a lot in a very short time. So, even if it may not happen by 2025, Ethiopia is serving as a good example for both low- and high-income countries, in its stride towards green development by having aligned policies throughout all sectors of the government.