Ethiopia is one of the countries in Africa dominated by agricultural society and agriculture contributes 38.8 percent to its GDP, more than 80 percent of livelihood and export.
Unfortunately, agriculture is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change. Climate change impacts are becoming threat to agricultural productivity and food security as well as low economic development. Moreover, it is aggravating poverty in many countries of the world including Ethiopia.
Currently, Climate Change impacts are mainly manifested in the form of recurrent drought and flood. Drought and flood impact results in decline in GDP, reduction in agricultural output.
To address existing problems, the Ethiopian government has launched Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) strategy in 2011 with the vision to achieve middle-income status by 2025 while developing a green economy. The strategy comprises of three components: Green-economy/mitigation, Adaptation/climate resilience and Funding instrument/facility.
CRGE strategy has identified effective options to improving existing productivity and reducing Green House Gas emission from agriculture sector as it reduces vulnerability of agriculture to Climate Change by improving adaptation, mitigation and productivity. It led to an economically viable, ecologically sustainable and socially suitable form of production.
CRGE pilot project was designed to test the strategy. The project was implemented nationally in 27 Woredas of all states. Interventions of the projects were clustered under 5 major outputs and focusing on capacity development intervention programs.
Sustainably increasing productivity, enhancing resilience of livelihoods and ecosystem, reducing Green House Gas emissions are focus areas of CRGE strategy.
They are also intended to improve resilience capacity of farming, promote efficient water management and promote small scale irrigation. The pilot project has been implemented by the full participation of communities’ intervention in a carefully planned manner not to overlap with other operating programs and projects.
Challenges of CRGE include among others: absence of well-established CRGE unit at regional level, lack of robust reporting systems at the beginning and inconsistent use of indicators, delays bank account opening in the regions and woredas, delays of budget and bank transactions system, limited support and involvement of technical team other than CRGE focal experts, shortage and absence of some inputs and supply systems (seed, poultry, beehive, improved sheep and goat breed), and procurement related problems were also among the challenges.
Strong commitment of the government, availability of reliable national policies, strategies and programmes that promote climate protection in the country; well established extension systems and institutional set ups at grass root levels; availability of agro-ecologically spread agricultural research centers and universities; availability of past experiences; CRGE mainstreamed into GTP II and different projects; international and regional organizations willingness to support implementation of the project and many ample opportunities are conducive for the implementation of CRGE in Ethiopia.
Due to the implementation of the project, different farmers have benefited even at the early stage of the realization of the project. One among those farmers is Taffesse Gelamo.
Taffese is a farmer from Southern Nations at Doye Gena Woreda of Bekafa Kebele, who is becoming a model farmer in his experience to benefiting from the Climate Resilient Green Economy program which has been implemented since the last two years.
He is managing to earn a better income by farming his field three times a year and is managing to secure better livelihood from the program after receiving orientation and using the Green Resilient Climate sensitive agriculture which has been realized as a pilot project nationwide. The project has a closer support from the government of Ethiopia and other donors.
Professionals were supporting those farmers by giving them with practical guidance and experience sharing on ways of utilizing a maximum potential from the climate resilient green economic development program and work in line with protecting the environment from harm.
“Now I am earning a better income after the implementation of this pilot project and have got recognition by managing to be a model farmer as I am coaching other farmers in the area to work in line with CRGE after receiving a closer support from the program by cultivating vegetables and fruits,” Tafesse added.
In a consultative workshop organized by the Ministry of Farming and Natural Resources with stakeholders, Tefera Taddese, who is a Natural Resource Development Protection and Use Directorate Director in the Ministry, told the Ethiopian Herald that Ethiopia has designed a Climate Resilient Green Economy strategy in a bid to keeping its promise to meet its vision of managing its people reach a middle income economic status by 2025 through decreasing carbon gas emissions on implementing green based economy which otherwise could have produced 250 Mega Tone Carbon Dioxide chemicals to the atmosphere.
“The pilot project is showing remarkable progress in all regions so far and we have learned a lot on that regard to further strengthen the project with joint collaboration and partnership and many donors and countries are now keen to support the program,” he added.
The pilot program has registered many successes so far with a vision of protecting climate change exposition of our country so as to maximize farmers’ productivity and preventing drought that could be caused by it.
CRGE that has been designed by the Ethiopian government since 2003 and implemented over the last two years in a bid to taking the country to the middle income level country within 15 years through conserving the environment side by side with maintaining the economic development, is showing much progress.
This will be possible by making the environment healthy that will easily be handed to the next generation properly. This pilot projects are under implementation in other sectors too in addition to the agriculture sector like Forest and Environment , Urban Development, Transport and other sectors.
The pilot projects that are under evaluation recently in the agricultural sector are said to be working effectively under this program in a bid to working on considering the environment, climate change so as to improve productivity in a bid to changing the livelihoods of farmers and portraitists.
Birhanu Assefa, CRGE unit Coordinator in the Ministry of Farming and Natural Resource, in his presentation said that the pilot project has been implemented in 27 woredas (districts) since the last 18 months in all regions in a bid to solving problems related to climate change.
He added that “capacity building for some 7000 stakeholders have been given on climate change and concrete results have been achieved on seed variety, soil fertility, drought resistance farming and improved animal and plant farming and climate resilient green economy activities.
The Ministry of Agriculture has also discussed on the ways forward to sustaining the program in the future with donors and stakeholders over the last weekend in Addis Ababa. And donors and stakeholders have shown keenness to support the project in the future.
[allafrica.com/]
