Melese Gogo Massamo ,
and Mulugeta Abebe Mamo, from the different institute of the Ethiopia.
wrote a research article about Participatory Watershed Management for Rural
Livelihoods in Gibe, Ethiopia. entitled, The role of participatory watershed
management practices for sustainable rural livelihood improvement in Handosha
Watershed, Gibe district, Southern Ethiopia. This research paper published by
the Journal of Biodiversity and Environmental Sciences (JBES). an open access
scholarly research journal on Biodiversity. under the affiliation of
the International Network For Natural Sciences | NNSpub. an open
access multidisciplinary research journal publisher.
Abstract
The sustainability of
environmental management practices such as watershed management intervention
strategies relies on the understanding of the connection of the rural
community’s participation, and livelihoods. However, there have not been many
efforts effort to document the relationship between watershed management and
sustainable livelihoods. In line with this, the research has assessed the role
of participatory watershed management practices for sustainable rural livelihood improvement in Handosha Watershed, Gibe district, Southern Ethiopia. To address
the above objective, household survey, focus group discussion and key informant
interview were employed to collect and analyze the data from 122 randomly
selected households in four sub-watersheds. Descriptive analysis, independent
t-test and chi-square test were applied to analyze the data. The result of the
study indicated that the collective value of overall livelihood assets and the
specific major components that encompass crop diversification, food
availability, land productivity, and physical assets were better after
watershed intervention than before watershed intervention. The key finding of
the research presents that due to different interventions the livelihood of the
community was diversified and enhanced especially; profits, soil fertility,
crop productivity, forest, water and food availability become enhanced.
Findings of the study suggested that further emphasis is needed to enhance the
households’ livelihood assets for sustainability of livelihoods. Local
administrators and development agents need to recognize socio economic and
topographic specific features as well as the constraints to involve society
fully in various activities of participatory watershed management activities.
Introduction
Sustainable livelihood
improvement is a growing issue, particularly in the developing countries given
the mounting challenge of poverty, low economic development and poor
agricultural. Ethiopia is not an exception where the degradation of land
resource base and associated decreasing land productivity have been a major
challenge for the sustenance of livelihoods of people (Teklewold et al., 2013).
Agriculture is the economic mainstay of the overwhelming majority of people in
Ethiopia and will continue to be the base for sustainable livelihood of the
country (Gessesse et al., 2016). However, the ongoing watershed degradation in
the form of soil erosion and soil nutrient depletion is the threatening factor
for agricultural development (Shiferaw and Singh 2010). The degradation of
watershed has been associated with the interacting effects of biophysical and
socioeconomic factors and exacerbated by rapid population growth which would be
resulted in not only decreasing land productivity but also aggravate ecological
degradation, hampered households’ livelihood improvement and social development
(Kerse 2018). In addition, much watershed conservation related research in
Ethiopia is fragmented, focusing on biophysical (Taye et al., 2015) and
economic returns (Kassie et al., 2011). Furthermore, a more specific conceptual
framework that explains the nexus of the perception, community participation,
and livelihoods to- wards sustained watershed management program is rarely
found.
In response to the
watershed degradation problems in the country, massive conservation,
rehabilitation and afforestation movements were undertaken in Ethiopia
(Engdawork & Bork, 2014; Tesfahunegn et al., 2012). Furthermore,
conservation measures had been regularly accepted by farmers aimed decreased
soil erosion, increased soil fertility and safeguarding the soil long-term
productivity (Moges & Amsalu, 2017) and achievements in food security,
poverty reduction and ecological sustainability (de Graaff et al., 2008;
[Teshome et al., 2016). The acceptance of watershed management practices has
been considered as agricultural development policy. Farmers gain incentives
from agricultural and international initiatives to invest watershed management
practices (de Graaff et al., 2013). However, the efforts couldn’t bring
perceived changes as expected (Teshome et al., 2016). Consequently, this
brought a low acceptance rate of some of these sustainable watershed management
practices in the rural regions( Berresaw et al., 2010) for its top-down
approach (de Graaff et al., 2013). As farmers were completely ignored from
decision making in the selection, designing evaluation and implementation
processes of watershed management practices The conservation measures in place
were also undertaken without farmer’s interest and conviction. As a result,
these drive the farmers to remove conservation structures following the change
of foodfor- work programs (Deressa et al., 2009). Furthermore, there was little
monitoring and assessment of the status of conservation measures and moreover,
negligible maintenance for their sustainability (de Graaff et al., 2013). On
the other hand, failure conservation efforts emanated from the fact that was implementing
agencies couldn’t notice local level institutional, physical and socioeconomic
realities (Enki et al., 2001). Thus, it’s vital to plan appropriate watershed
conservation measures that are acceptable by farmers, require practical
consideration of different socio-economic determinants affecting farmers’
decision (Shiferaw et al., 2009). Inadequate success in the acceptance of
watershed management practices has been a problem as lesser willingness of
farmers to implement watershed management practices ( Moges & Amsalu, 2017;
Teshome et al., 2016).
Effective watershed
management practices can be realized only when farmers believe and decide on
the benefits of practices and are actively involved in the evaluation and
implementation activities. The farmer’s decision to use and manage natural
resources highly depends on their perception of the landscape (Mekuriaw et al.,
2018b. In fact, farmers can modify the technologies to their real situations
(Teshome et al., 2016).
Their perception and
participation also vary in space and individual households due to different
interactive factors. Therefore, this research aimed to identify the roles of
participatory watershed management practices for sustainable rural livelihood
improvement in Gibe district, southern Ethiopia.
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