5 July 2024
Preserving Ethiopia's biodiversity: A success story in enset conservation
Following a year of community conservation efforts in rural Ethiopia, we celebrate a huge success for the future of the false banana
Ethiopia, a nation rich in biodiversity and agrobiodiversity, faces a paradox of being one of the most food-insecure countries in the world.
We need innovative strategies that can leverage the country's rich biological resources to enhance food security.
Ethiopia's diverse ecosystems, ranging from highland forests to lowland savannas, harbour a multitude of useful plant and animal species, many of which are found nowhere else but here.
This biodiversity is not only vital for ecological balance but also for the livelihoods of millions of Ethiopians who rely on traditional agricultural practices.
Enset: The Tree Against Hunger
Enset, often referred to as the 'tree against hunger,' is a cornerstone of food security for over 20 million Ethiopians. This versatile plant, which resembles a banana tree, plays a crucial role in Ethiopian agriculture and food security.
Enset is characterised by its hundreds of different landraces (or varieties), each with unique traits and uses. It provides various food products such as kocho (fermented enset, baked into bread), bulla (a starchy extract, made into porridge), and amicho (boiled corm, eaten like boiled potato). Beyond food, enset is used to make rope for building houses, serves as fodder for livestock, and has medicinal applications.
Enset's diverse adaptive traits, including resistance to drought and diseases, make it an essential crop in the face of climate change. Conserving the diversity of enset landraces is not only critical for food security but also for preserving Ethiopia's cultural heritage. These landraces also represent a valuable genetic library that could be crucial for global agricultural resilience.
Payments for Agrobiodiversity Conservation Services (PACS): A New Approach
To maintain and enhance agrobiodiversity, the Payments for Agrobiodiversity Conservation Services (PACS) scheme was introduced. PACS draws inspiration from the concept of payments for ecosystem services—a sector valued at $36-43 billion annually.
The primary aim of PACS is to fairly distribute the costs and benefits associated with conserving agrobiodiversity.
Currently, much of the agrobiodiversity in Ethiopia is maintained in situ by smallholder subsistence farmers. These farmers face significant pressure to switch to intensive farming of crops like maize or cash crops, which are less resilient to environmental shocks compared to diverse traditional crops.
Alternatively, some may convert farmland back to forest, which could negatively impact local food security. PACS offers an incentive for farmers to continue maintaining high agrobiodiversity, providing them with a viable option to sustain traditional agricultural practices while improving their livelihoods.
Piloting PACS in Ethiopia
Our project - funded by The Ellis Goodman Family Foundation - piloted the PACS approach in Ethiopia, involving a comprehensive four-stage process.
1. Determining conservation priorities
The first phase of our project involved working with 500 farmers across 22 communities to identify the landraces of enset present across the study site and determine their rarity.
Each farming community listed all the landraces they grew or knew of, and we worked together to classify each one based on how many farmers grew it and in what quantities.
This process helped us identify 175 farmer-recognised landraces and classify them into rarity categories. Of these, 59 landraces were considered endangered, and our conservation efforts focused on these.
2. Identifying compensation costs
In the second phase, we held workshops with community leaders to explore the competitive tender process. This involved communities putting in bid offers stating which endangered landraces they were willing to grow on their farms and the level of compensation required.
Our workshops encouraged community leaders to consider their specific opportunity costs, and multiple scenarios were role-played to ensure they understood the bidding process. We also added a social dimension by prioritising bids from communities that involved more female and elderly farmers to promote the inclusion of these groups among community bids.
Following the workshops, all 22 communities chose to submit bid offers, and we received offers to conserve 52 of the 59 rare landraces. Using a model to select the most cost-effective offers, we accepted bids from 15 communities, covering 7,927 plants across 44 landraces.
3. Planting and Monitoring
In the third phase, we provided communities with planting material (corms) for the selected landraces. They were given a year to propagate and grow these plants, with the team carrying out regular monitoring to check progress and provide assistance if required.
4. Evaluating Success
At the end of the year, we reassessed the rarity status of the landraces to determine the changes. The results were overwhelmingly positive. For example, the Bonga Gedam community were selected to grow a landrace called Chagecha. Not only did they improve the rarity status of the Chagecha from endangered to vulnerable (an improvement of two categories) but also improved the status of an additional eight landraces.
We saw this trend consistently across other communities too, which improved the rarity status of almost four times as many landraces as those they were incentivised to conserve.
Community Impact and Feedback
The project's success was evident in the tangible improvements seen across participating communities.
Tesfanesh Kifle from Semein Bench, Genja community, expressed her gratitude, stating “we had lost a number of landraces but now we are able to gain them back. Seeing from the reassessment of rarity status that we have improved a lot makes us so happy”.
Feedback from the community highlighted the project's role in enhancing food security and empowering marginalised groups, particularly women.
Kesfanesh Mekuriya said “before women were not invited to this kind of project. We thank this project for respecting us and inviting us to participate”.
Participants appreciated the inclusivity of the project and the opportunity to play an active role in agrobiodiversity conservation.
Another positive outcome of the project was the significant capacity building provided for early career scientists participating in its delivery.
Asaminew Woldegebriel remarked, “assessing the status of landraces, rewarding incentives, and documentation of the report were very interesting and taught me more as a tool for agrobiodiversity conservation”.
Bezawit Genanaw added, “this project has inspired me a lot to work on my analytical skills and has taught me plenty”.
Expanding the Horizon
Given the project's success, we are keen to expand PACS to more locations across Ethiopia, involving more communities and increasing the number of crops included in the scheme.
The demand to participate far exceeded our initial capacity, with offers received for 46,500 plants, while limits in grant funding due to this being a pilot project, allowed us to select offers for just 7,927 plants. Farmers have expressed a strong desire for further training and inclusion of additional landraces to enhance food security.
Tesfanesh Kifle emphasised, “what we suggest for the future is that you should give more training and work with a greater number of communities. If it is possible, providing more landraces is also going to help secure our food security”.
The project's success has also sparked interest among non-participating farmers.
Titiyos Adisu noted, “other farmers who are not participating in this project also understood the benefit and are asking to buy corms from us”.
This highlights the huge potential for PACS to be scaled up and for it to make a broader impact on agrobiodiversity conservation and food security in Ethiopia.
The project’s future
The PACS project in Ethiopia has demonstrated that innovative, community-based approaches can successfully conserve agrobiodiversity while enhancing food security and livelihoods.
By empowering local farmers and recognising the critical role of women, PACS has set a precedent for sustainable agricultural practices. The project's success underscores the importance of continuing and expanding these efforts, ensuring that the rich agrobiodiversity of Ethiopia is preserved for future generations.
Thanks to The Ellis Goodman Family Foundation for their funding of this project.
