Evidence generation on the impact of Ethiopia’s Green Legacy Initiative (GLI) on the regeneration of local plant species, habitat restoration, and other ecosystem services improvements to ensure resilience and livelihood improvement.

Challenge

We aim at understanding i) the improvement brought by GLI on local plant species diversity, ecosystem services improvement, including local climate, ii) the impact of GLI on socioeconomic aspects of the local community, and iii) the perception of the local community on the positive and negative (if any) aspects of GLI to drive lessons on its sustainability and upscaling.

Insight

The project undertakes participatory discussions to understand the perception of the local community on GLI, species registry, and ecosystem improvement audits. In studied areas, planting one tree species has assisted natural regeneration of 7 to 10 local plant species, largely improved habitats, and restored degraded lands and ecosystem services. The benefits to the local community span from the moderation of local climate to increased agricultural productivity. The enhancement of water resources is remarkable. There are also jobs and employment opportunities created for the locals. An extremely positive attitude developed towards GLI, which triggered interest in local communities to protect natural resources through sustainable utilization. We learned that the integration of economic activities into the forest resources is quite important.

Collaboration

We collaborate with local community, regional, zonal, and district-level offices of environmental protection, climate change, and biodiversity to implement project activities, participate in capacity-building training sessions, and engage in discussions.

Dr Dejene K. Mengistu

Dr Dejene K. Mengistu, a scientist at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, has a passion for enhancing the resilience and livelihood of the local community by working closely with them. His research focuses on deploying diversities for climate change adaptation, improving farm productivity and its diversity, and empowering the farming community through full participation in decision-making. Awareness creation through training and engaged discussion is his priority in his research areas. Dejene has published many journal articles, a book chapter, and books in his area of expertise.

Images show: 2) GLI assisted in the natural regeneration of local plant species 3) GLI supported restoration of degraded landscape 4) GLI improves habitat restoration for beneficial insects. Credit: Dejene K. Mengistu