Comprehensive impact assessment of watershed management interventions in Ethiopia

Land degradation in the form of soil erosion and nutrient depletion have been a major constraint for the provision of goods and services from rainfed `agricultural watersheds in Ethiopia. Watershed management interventions such as soil and water conservation (SWC) and/or water harvesting (WH) are crucial to improve the provision of goods and services of rainfed agriculture in Ethiopia. As a result, huge investments have been made by international and national organizations in watershed management interventions since 1980s. Although there have been several efforts regarding investments in watershed management interventions in Ethiopia, comprehensive impact assessment of these interventions are limited. The impacts of watershed management interventions on the reduction of land degradation, improvement of soil productivity and other ecosystem services, and livelihood improvement are also scale and site-specific. Further, the bottlenecks and requirements for the success of watershed management have not been identified. In general, previous studies are fragmented with limited comprehensive impact assessments of biophysical and socio-economic issues in the watershed. Comprehensive evaluation of watershed management interventions is crucial to figure out the overall impacts of watershed management interventions on biophysical, socio-economic and policy issues. It also filters lessons for scaling-up of best practices in watershed management interventions, encourage investments in watershed management and carry out correction measures on the bottlenecks of watershed management including policy intervention. The main goal of this project is to improve the productivity of land and water in rainfed agriculture and increase resilience of smallholder farmers through enhanced ecosystem services in agricultural watersheds. The specific objectives of this project are: 1. Characterize watersheds and management interventions in 8 watersheds in different agro-ecologies, 2. Assess the impacts of watershed management interventions on ecosystem services: provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural, 3. Investigate the impact of watershed management interventions on socio-economic conditions and framers’ livelihoods, 4. Assess the participation of local communities, the role of gender in watershed management and investigate equity issues in costs and benefits sharing among the communities, and 5. Identify bottlenecks in watershed management as well as the requirements of stakeholders at different levels (watershed/Kebele, district, zone and region) for the success of watershed management programmes.