Sustainable Natural Resources Management (NRM) for Enhanced Pastoralist Food Security in the Borana Zone, Ethiopia.

Borana pastoralists are faced with different sets of complex problems that contributed to their increased vulnerability and food insecurity over the past two decades. This is mainly attributed to socio-economic, political and environmental factors. Land degradation mainly due to bush encroachment, overgrazing, soil erosion, population pressure, recurrent drought, and the weakening of the traditional rangeland and/or land use management systems are among the key factors for the weakening of the pastoralists’ livelihood. On the other hand, resource-based conflicts, limited national political representation alongside failure to recognize communally owned rangelands in policy frameworks fuelled pastoralists’ vulnerability to shocks and disasters and shrinkage of grazing lands.

The proposed contribution aims at improving (agro-) pastoralists’ food security and adaptive capacities through improving and strengthening natural resources management practices, governance system and pastoralist income diversification. Thus, the programme will address one of the major root causes of pastoralists’ food insecurity and vulnerability.

There are different actors in NRM in Borana zone with different sets of approaches and interventions, which are weakly coordinated and harmonized. The Government of Ethiopia (GoE) at local and regional level, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and customary institutions are the main stakeholders of NRM related interventions in Borana zone. For this reason, SDC will consider addressing the prevailing NRM related problems in Borana through (1) working through the GoE and (2) through NGOs with an open tender process.

The intervention is foreseen for a total duration of circa 12 years over 3 phases, with a total budget of CHF 18 million. A budget of CHF 6.0 million per phase is proposed.

(Main Credit Phase 1):

01.01.2016