By Checky Abuje
The governing board of the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) has given the green light to a $37 million investment plan to protect rural communities in Ethiopia from climate-related shocks such as floods and droughts and the food insecurity arising from these calamities. At the same time, the funding will also aim at restoring and safeguarding the country’s carbon-rich forests and natural ecosystems.
The Ethiopian government expects the plan to mobilize $492 million in co-financing, with $253 million from the African Development Bank and the World Bank Group.
The investment plan addresses climate change and land degradation, which undermine the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers and pastoralists in Ethiopia.
CIF funding will focus on forests, including famed wild Arabica coffee forests, farmlands, and rangelands in four regions – Amhara, Oromia, South Ethiopia, and Somalia. With CIF resources, about 322,276 hectares of degraded landscapes and ecosystems will be restored and an online national forest registry will be created.
In partnership with local communities, investments will focus on degraded land recovery through accelerated afforestation and reforestation, assisted natural regeneration practices for soil and water conservation, and more sustainable means of harvesting and farming.
The plan also aims to reduce pressure on forests – today a major source of fuel and timber – through new income opportunities, including carbon credits that reward communities for forest conservation and support farmers of non-timber forest products such as gum, resin, honey, bamboo, fruits, spices, and coffee.
Women farmers, who play a crucial role in Ethiopia’s food production, will benefit from a dedicated strand of the investment plan and be enabled to claim a stronger voice in local decision-making bodies, switch to higher-value activities such as honey production and ecotourism, adopt climate-smart farming techniques, and establish women-led agricultural cooperatives.
CIF’s Dedicated Grant Mechanism will additionally channel a total of $4 million in funding directly to Ethiopia’s vulnerable local communities in the four target regions, enabling them to support and scale community-led actions to diversify livelihoods and safeguard biodiversity.
One of the largest and most densely populated countries on the African continent, Ethiopia depends heavily on its land to sustain its economy. Over 70% of Ethiopians live in rural areas, where agricultural products are the dominant source of income.
Approximately 45% of Ethiopia’s coffee – the country’s main export commodity – comes from natural forests, which also store an estimated 10.1 billion tCO2eq. This valuable forest cover is being rapidly depleted: more than half of the country’s landmass is experiencing some level of degradation and an estimated 11 million hectares are in danger of desertification.
Additionally, weather shocks are threatening the livelihoods, livestock and crops of millions of farmers and pastoralists.
Ethiopia’s investment plan will be funded under CIF’s almost $400 million Nature, People, and Climate investment program (NPC), supporting the development of nature-based solutions in low- and middle-income countries.
NPC funds initiatives that recognize the interdependence of land use, climate-change mitigation and adaptation, and the improvement of livelihoods for rural communities and Indigenous Peoples.