A new paper addresses how policy responses to climate change are shaping the agricultural sector in Ethiopia, and their significance for the country’s future development.
‘Warming to Change? Climate Policy and Agricultural Development in Ethiopia’ highlights multiple responses, including those under the banner of ‘green’ economic development, with a focus on developing a low-carbon economy by 2025.
More about the paper
Under the broad banner of ‘green development’, emerging policy narratives centre on achieving ‘climate smart’ agriculture, establishing more intensified and commercial approaches and, in the livestock sector, seeking major transformations in pastoralism within the country’s lowland periphery.
At the same time, a number of structural gaps are emerging, including the success with which climate policy is being integrated across different natural resource sectors, from water and land management to rural afforestation. Important political-economic considerations are shown to be driving some of the emerging challenges, as Ethiopia struggles to find ways of engaging a rapidly-growing economically active population.
Crowding out
The paper suggests that externally-driven policy processes are crowding out more coherent analyses of key national-level resource management and development issues. A rush for climate finance may crowd out important local knowledge and experience from below that can better inform policy responses.
Without adequately addressing multiple challenges facing smallholder farmers in many parts of the overcrowded highlands, question marks continue to surround the capacity of the country to achieve real agricultural transformation under the ambitious Growth and Transformation Plan.
Download the paper
- Warming to Change? Climate Policy and Agricultural Development in Ethiopia (pdf)
Future Agricultures Working Paper 71
by Leulseged Yirgu, Alan Nicol and Shweta Srinivasan
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Photo: Ethio drought 7 by aheavens on Flickr