Deforestation, overgrazing, and unsustainable methods of cultivation are threatening agriculture and food security in the highlands of East Africa. In response, economists and other development professionals have turned their attention to combating the pr

The papers presented at the workshop dealt with a wide array of topics related to land management in the highlands of Tigray.

This volume deals with land degradation, which is occurring in almost all terrestrial biomes and agro-ecologies, in both low and high income countries and is stretching to about 30% of the total global land area. About three billion people reside in these degraded lands. However, the impact of land degradation is especially severe on livelihoods of the poor who heavily depend on natural resources. The annual global cost of land degradation due to land use and cover change (LUCC) and lower cropland and rangeland productivity is estimated to be about 300 billion USD. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) accounts for the largest share (22%) of the total global cost of land degradation. Only about 38% of the cost of land degradation due to LUCC - which accounts for 78% of the US$300 billion loss – is borne by land users and the remaining share (62%) is borne by consumers of ecosystem services off the farm. The results in this volume indicate that reversing land degradation trends makes both economic sense, and has multiple social and environmental benefits. On average, one US dollar investment into restoration of degraded land returns five US dollars. The findings of the country case studies call for increased investments into the rehabilitation and restoration of degraded lands, including through such institutional and policy measures as strengthening community participation for sustainable land management, enhancing government effectiveness and rule of law, improving access to markets and rural services, and securing land tenure. The assessment in this volume has been conducted at a time when there is an elevated interest in private land investments and when global efforts to achieve sustainable development objectives have intensified. In this regard, the results of this volume can contribute significantly to the ongoing policy debate and efforts to design strategies for achieving sustainable development goals and related efforts to address land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.

The soils of eastern Tigray are characterised by low productivity and severe land degradation attributed to many causes, principal among which is soil erosion. The rugged terrain, coupled with poverty, significantly limit resource availability for agricultural production in many parts of the region. Crop production is therefore characterised by practices that are regarded as unsustainable and thus compound the problems of land degradation. These highlight a strong need for sustained effort to promote land use practices that offer better soil protection, while providing supplementary sources of income in the region. Reforestation is identified as a technology with the potential to rehanilitate soils and provide many goods and services in resource constrained areas. Reforestation is therefore identified as a possible viable alternative land use for the Eastern Tigray region in this study, which examines the impact of different land use scenarios on soil erosion in a selected catchment in eastern Tigray. Specifically, the study examines soil loss under prevailing land use (current land use scenario) and three alternative land use scenarios based on reforestation (reforest1, reforest2 and reforest3) at a scale above plot level. The study is carried out in a selected catchment, that is identified as representative of bio-physical and socio-economic conditions in eastern Tigray.