ETHIOPIA PROVIDES A well known example of a severely degraded African environment with the consequent implications for food shortage and famine. There, deforestation has reduced tree cover to 2 7 per cent of surface area; 5s60 per cent of rainfall is lost as run-off, carrying an estimated 2-3 billion tonnes of topsoil away annually; and declining land/agricultural productivity is being outstripped by population growth (the latter increasing at 2 6 to 2 9 per cent per annum). Resource conservation, initiated in the early 1970's, has attempted to conserve and regenerate soil and water. This paper, which focuses primarily on north-central Ethiopia, seeks to examine some of these . . . . . . . * . conservatlon actsvltles ln an attempt to 1C entlfy how conservatlon 1S related to national economic and development policies and to assess their effectiveness. Since this paper is concerned with agricultural policy, there is no discussion of the security situation in the region. While relatively few conservation projects in Ethiopia have been evaluated or made public internal reports, I argue that available evidence strongly indicates that conservation work is neither effective nor sustainable. Further, conservation projects appear to threaten the livelihood of increasing numbers of rural poor. This occurs directly through the removal of arable land for afforestation, and indirectly because conservation, and agricultural policy generally, are generating contradictions which work against the interests of peasants and enhance resource 'mining' of the soil. Proponents of soil and water conservation justify the urgency of their work by referring to the present state of environmental degradation in the highlands where extensive deforestation and wide-scale soil erosion are associated with declining crop yields. This identification of social cause with environmental effect, together with radically improved possibilities to intervene in this process, has strengthened donor resolve to channel