Working Landscape Ethiopia “Making forests pay”: Our aim is to strengthen community rights and diversify livelihoods in ways that protect and expand forests and tree cover, as part of an integrated approach to landscape management. Our programme consists of three main components: (a) establishing an Ethiopian dryland restoration strategy (for better policies, laws and regulations) (b) landscape-level work (to promote climate-smart practices and restoration); and (c) analysing community rights and value chains (for knowledge generation). (a) Establish an Ethiopian dryland restoration strategy (policy at national & regional levels);
(b) Landscape-level work – from strategy to action in a selected landscape (sustainable land use);
(c) Community rights and value chain analyses (knowledge generation);
Ethiopia cannot fulfil its NDC without attention to restoration in the drylands. In the latest revision of its NDC, Ethiopia reaffirmed the central place of Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR), but policymakers still tend to focus on the wet forests of the south, rather than the drylands of the east and the north (which contain a greater number of trees). In 2022, we will work towards the following outcomes: (i) Stakeholders develop a shared understanding of the contribution of dryland restoration to the realization of Ethiopia’s NDC; (ii) Policymakers, including the REDD+ Secretariat, direct greater efforts/funding towards the drylands, recognizing the role of forests and trees managed by local communities; (iii) government and NGO programmes and projects are designed based on a sound understanding of the particular conditions of drylands; and (iv) policymakers incorporate integrated landscape approaches in their approach to NDCs.