Ethiopia’s sustainable land management practices: lessons for ecosystem restoration

• Applicant: Dr. Dula Duguma
• Subject Area: Ecology of Land Use ; Human Geography ; Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 566086178

Ecosystem restoration evolved in response to the challenges posed by ecosystem degradation. Ecosystem degradation has been a persistent challenge in Ethiopia since the 1970s, driven by unsustainable land-use practices, climate change, population growth, deforestation, overgrazing, and agricultural expansion. In response, successive Ethiopian governments have launched several large-scale ecosystem restoration initiatives aimed at promoting restoration, including the globally recognized Sustainable Land Management Programme (SLMP) implemented since 2008. Despite significant investments and efforts made to ecosystem restoration through the SLMP, the social-ecological impacts and lessons learned from the programme remain inadequately understood. The proposed research will fill this gap by taking a comprehensive social-ecological systems approach to examine and understand ecosystem restoration effects on biodiversity (with an emphasis on woody plant species), provisioning ecosystem services such as crop production, livestock feed, (loss of) grazing area, food production, and other daily sustenance products people generate from the landscape (i.e., ecosystem services and disservices), land ownership and use rights, and community’s sense of place towards the restored landscapes. Through addressing these themes, the proposed research will contribute to ecosystem restoration science, landscape ecology and conservation science, as well as being of direct value to restoration practitioners who depend on evidence-based information to design future restoration interventions. Because many of the social-ecological challenges in Ethiopia have broad similarities with challenges in smallholder farming landscapes elsewhere, the findings will be of interest to a broad audience of ecologists and restoration scientists not only in Ethiopia but also in many other parts of the world.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants