Forest landscape restoration in Northern Ethiopia

These juniper trees at Felegewoyni village were planted seven years ago. By managing them with pruning and water harvesting structures, we’ve watched them grow from half a metre tall to  more than two metres in two years alone! 

Impacts like this from our Desa'a project underwent an assessment by Tigray's bureaus of Charity and Finance earlier this year – and on 1st September, their findings were presented at a meeting in Wukro town. It was attended by members of the project’s active woredas (districts) – Atsbi, Tsrae-Wenberta and Tsaeda-Emba – as well as representatives from other restoration initiatives, researchers and local leaders.

The bureaus praised the project for its strong collaborations with local institutions and communities, as well as for the passion, work ethic and commitment of WeForest staff. The awesome survival rates of planted seedlings in the project area was of particular note, and the assessors suggested studying the contributing factors to scale up this achievement as a best practice for the region. 

Success stories from local participants were testament to the project’s impact. Improvements in household incomes were confirmed by many personal accounts, with several participants confirming that the new sources of income have reduced their dependence on forest resources. One such testimony was from a family who received 3 mature female sheep from WeForest and reached 30 sheep in 4 years. The family sold 27 of the sheep and bought a cow, and are now earning a solid income through milk sales.  

“The project’s achievements, working models and monitoring has inspired us. The Desa’a project truly transforms the landscape and people positively, and this is what we should do in the future,” said one bureau representative at the meeting. 

At the beginning of November, the Desa'a project was honoured to receive a visit from Professor Mitiku Haile, founder of Mekelle University and 2021 Laureate of the GCHERA (Global Confederation of Higher Education Associations for Agricultural and Life Sciences) World Agriculture Prize. He was accompanied by colleagues Dr. Abadi, previously head of the Tigray Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Development, and Dr. Girmay, a professor at Mekelle University. 

With WeForest Ethiopia Country Director Aklilu Mekuria, the visitors discussed topics such as sustainability and carbon financing, how to scale up WeForest’s practices in other areas, research initiatives that could leverage the forest and landscape restoration in Desa'a, and what is needed from government, universities and other stakeholders to support WeForest. All the visitors were hugely impressed by what they saw, and promised to use their capacity and influence to support and promote our activities!

Thank you for helping to make all this possible!

Recently, several members of WeForest’s HQ were able to visit our projects in Ethiopia for the first time since the conflict began in 2020. They were overwhelmed by the welcome given to them by the communities, who expressed their gratitude not only for WeForest’s efforts to provide seeds and other essentials to ensure the harvest, but also because the organization was one of the only NGOs that stayed in the region during the war. 

In Desa’a, planting season has already begun, thanks to the unusually early rains this year. Check out these inspiring videos of the communities preparing the landscape for planting here. 1 322 526 seedlings have been raised in the nurseries and so far 4463 ha of land has been brought under restoration management – about 50% of the target for this year.

In Gewocha, we finished an important milestone: the forest vegetation inventory. This essential step in any Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) project defines the characteristics of the forest to be restored, its composition, species diversity and regeneration status. As well as providing crucial input to inform decision-making and management of the subsequent restoration, it also provides a starting baseline by which the project’s success can be measured. 

To date, the Gewocha Forest project is supporting 1682 families to adopt agroforestry practices, growing cash crops like Rhamnus prinoides, Coffee arabica and fruit seedlings to boost their household incomes and food security. Habtamu A., a 35 year-old father of two, came back to his hometown of Finoteselam after working in Sudan and struggled to make a living as a masonry worker. With high-value fruit tree and vegetable seedlings and training from the Gewocha Forest project, he instead established this well-planned 0.25 ha agroforestry plot, which is already boosting his income with the equivalent of US $100 every week. He’s planted vegetables and fruit trees like banana, avocado and mango every five metres with coffee at two metre intervals between them, so the trees provide essential shade to the coffee plants. 

Thank you for helping to make all this possible!