Historical Perspectives and Present Scenarios of Watershed Management in Ethiopia

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This paper is aimed to evaluate the historical perspectives and present scenarios of watershed management in Ethiopia. Watershed management is not the new concept of the country because it had highly experienced indigenous peoples those have been practiced from an ancient period. But, it became the prominent after the recurrent malnutrition and famine problems followed the 1970’s and 1980’s drought and subsequent catastrophic phenomena. Land degradation in the form of soil erosion has been usually considered as the main driving causes of the problem. Thus, the previous governments and other partners have initiated various soil and water conservation activities though they were mostly unsatisfactory or failed. Because there was lack of community participation, sector driven and single medium approach, unsecured land tenure, disincentives and unmanageable planning units. The present government has been taken lessons from the past shortcomings and then it has been initiated participatory community-based watershed management. As a result, it showed positive achievements in rehabilitation of severely degraded land, and it becoming as sources of income for the local communities. Here, it doesn’t mean that current watershed management practices are perfect but practically it has various problems that will be solved in the future. For example: working quality, strengthening awareness creation and capacity building, real community participation, equitable and faire sharing benefits between and among upstream-downstream community should be paid attention. In general, watershed management must be evaluated in terms of environmental soundness, economic viability and social acceptability moreover; it should be supported by research and educational institutions.