Abstract
Throughout sub-Saharan Africa wetlands provide ecosystem services that are critical to the development needs of many people. Local wetland use, however, is often at odds with broader national policy goals in which narratives of conservation and protection dominate, hence a recurring challenge is how to reconcile these tensions through the development of policies and field practice that deliver sustainable development. In this paper we examine the extent to which this challenge has been achieved in Ethiopia, charting the changes in wetlands policy and discourse over the last twenty years while reviewing the contribution of the multidisciplinary Ethiopian Wetlands Research Programme (EWRP) (1997–2000). Our analysis suggests that despite EWRP having a significant legacy in developing national interest in wetlands among research, government and non-governmental organisations, its more holistic social-ecological interpretation of wetland management remains neglected within a policy arena dominated by specific sectoral interests and little recognition of the needs of local people. In exploring the impacts at the local level, recent investigations with communities in Ilu Aba Bora Zone highlight adjustments in wetland use that famers attribute to environmental, economic and social change, but which also evidence the adaptive nature of wetland-based livelihoods.
Highlights
Throughout sub-Saharan Africa wetlands provide ecosystem services that are critical to the development needs of many people
The example above of the ‘wetlands task force’ illustrates well the ways in which wetland use and management has occurred at a multi-sectoral policy interface populated by a range of stakeholders with concerns ranging from agricultural productivity and food security, to health and water resource planning
There is widespread evidence from our review that wetlands of all sizes continue to play a vital role in supporting the livelihoods of people throughout Ethiopia as they have done for generations
Summary
Wetlands (2021) 41: 20 collection (Whitlow 1983; Bell et al 1987; Roberts 1988; Wood and Thawe 2013). In translating this into policy and practice, much attention has focussed on ‘adaptive comanagement’ as a transdisciplinary approach that seeks to work with resource users, at the community level, to identify and enhance institutional structures, knowledge sharing networks and appropriate monitoring systems in order to build adaptive capacity (Olsson et al 2004; Armitage et al 2009) Within this context the key challenge for Africa’s critically important smaller wetlands becomes arguably less about how to conserve and protect them from people, and more about how to ensure their ecosystem services and livelihood benefits can be sustained for the future in the face of numerous shocks and pressures.
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