Ethiopia's problems of food shortage and environmental degradation are well documented. We know less about the arena in which competing agricultural, natural resources and environmental strategies are fought for. Who are the protagonists and how do they fight their corner?

An Institute of Development Studies report casts light on how decisions are made in Ethiopia. It reveals a complex environment in which policy debates are not resolved as a result of rational choices but are often fudged as conflicts rage among ever-shifting networks of scientists, donors, ideologues and bureaucrats.

The study traces controversies characterising the evolution of rural development policies. Those clinging to the original Maoist inspiration of the ruling party argue that mass-mobilisation schemes can combat the long-term challenge of soil erosion. Others promote policies to increase incentives for farmers to invest in their own land. Some look to off-the-shelf modern Green Revolution technologies to avert the recurrent food crises, while others argue for low external input solutions based on the principles of conservation agriculture.

The study looks at the types of knowledge about natural resources from which policy conflicts emerge and how positions get established, challenged and excluded.

Seemingly regardless of the regime in power, agricultural extension policies in Ethiopia have offered more of the same: external inputs (seeds and fertiliser) linked to credit programmes and mass mobilisation to check erosion. The SG-2000 programme, launched in 1995 with support from the World Bank and international scientists, chimed with a huge, ultimately unsuccessful, World Food Programme food-for work scheme to build bunds and plant seedlings. In a political climate dominated by a government staking its credibility on achieving food security, little space remained available for different views on agricultural extension.

Ethiopia today, like past regimes, tends to authoritarianism, hierarchy, centralised rule and lack of transparency. However, despite a political culture inheriting a bureaucratic mind-set antithetical to bottom-up policies, debate goes on. More recently alternative types of policy process -participatory and inclusive- have begun to emerge. The paper concludes by suggesting why these are happening in some parts of Ethiopia but not others.

Other key features highlighted are:

• The surprising commonality between policies of Green Revolution and environmental rehabilitation enthusiasts, united by a misplaced belief in over-population and impending chaos.
• Ideas of environmental degradation which are central to policy narratives in Ethiopia need to be examined much more critically than is often the case.
• Significant differences, as regionalisation policies come on stream, between Tigray (where participatory approaches belatedly find an audience) and elsewhere where (much resented) top-down orthodoxy prevails.
• When actor networks are tightly formed and impenetrable, no amount of rational argument will budge a policy from its pedestal.

The findings suggest that external actors and policy makers should:

• recognise that funding of successful NGO participatory projects, together with the imaginative creation of networks around these activities can create new policy spaces, and help reshape official thinking
• seize opportunities presented by decentralisation to promote effective and appropriate local interventions.

Source(s):
'Knowledge, power and politics: the environmental policy-making process in Ethiopia' by James Keeley and Ian Scoones, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 38/1 (2000)

Funded by: Economic and Social Research Council

id21 Research Highlight: 15 May 2001

Further Information:
James Keeley
Environment Group
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9RE
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1273 606 261
Fax: +44 (0)1273 621 202 / 691 647
Contact the contributor: jamesk@ids.ac.uk

Environment Team, Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK

Other related links:
'Empowering People - a guide to participation' from UNDP

AGREN concentrates on information exchange in the agriculture sector of developing countries

WRI provides information, ideas, and solutions to global environmental problems

Refer to the UN University Environment and Sustainable Development Page

NRMAfrica assesses proposed natural resources management reform policies in the context of Africa