Ethiopian Review

The climate change fight will be won, or lost, on the ground and one of those countries on the frontline is Ethiopia.

By Chris Bond | Yorkshire Post

YORKSHIRE, UK — WITH the long-awaited climate change conference in Copenhagen now in full swing, the battle is on to win over the sceptics.

The UN’s World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) came out yesterday and said this decade was the warmest on record, while in a separate report, the UK’s Met Office said the last 10 years have been “by far” the warmest since records began 160 years ago.

Such announcements have presumably been timed to coincide with the negotiations that many hope will lead to a global climate change deal that can succeed where the Kyoto agreement failed.

The decisions that will affect all of us will be made by the world’s leaders, but the climate change fight will be won, or lost, on the ground and one of those countries on the frontline is Ethiopia.

When most people think of Ethiopia, they tend to conjure up images of parched landscapes and starving children, but the country also has large tracts of forest that are vital to the African eco-system.

It’s an area of the world that Adrian Wood, an emeritus professor at Huddersfield University, has been involved with for the past 30 years and one that he hopes will become a model in the battle against global warming.

Prof Wood is spearheading an EU-funded project in Ethiopia’s south-western forests highlighting the crucial role that developing countries can play in absorbing carbon emissions. The project started six years ago and runs until 2012, by which time it is hoped more local communities will be managing large swathes of the country’s rainforests.

He says it’s all about adding value to the forest so that African countries like Ethiopia will become less dependent on foreign aid. “The focus is on non-timber forest products such as coffee, spices and honey, which will add value to the forest and help communities manage it sustainably and protect the land from being sold to investors and cleared for farming. If people can make a living from the forests, they become less reliant on outside aid and you create a sustainable model.”

Prof Wood is leading a team of 25 people, including eight Ethiopians, and one of their biggest achievements so far has been to get the regional government to review its forest policy, restoring rights to local people who had the land taken from them more than a hundred years ago. “We are supporting the regional government which recognises that forest areas are better managed by the communities who live there, rather than the government which does not have adequate resources,” he says.

Another big success story has been the creation of a group of community trading companies based in south-west Ethiopia, which is now producing 20 tons of honey a year. “By using the forests in this way you are, of course, keeping carbon locked up so it’s not being released into the atmosphere. If you clear an area to use for farming then the amount of carbon storage is much less.”

The project is also encouraging companies to get involved in carbon offset payments – which allows organisations to buy carbon stored in forest areas and compensate for their own carbon emissions. This money can then be ploughed back to “oil the wheels” of new sustainable forest-based schemes.

Prof Wood says managing forests, and encouraging communities to make a
living from them rather than destroying them, can also help prevent future flooding.

“Ethiopia is at the headwaters of tributaries of the River Nile and this is one of the few forest areas in these headwaters and if you can keep the forests they can regulate the flow of water much better than if you have farmland.”

The importance of the project is such that it’s being used as one of the models for an interactive on-line atlas that the EU’s international development agency commissioned for the conference in Copenhagen.

Many scientists and environmentalists are pinning their hopes on a lasting deal coming out of the talks, and Prof Wood is unequivocal
about the threat we’re facing if we fail to act.

“We have to sort out this issue of climate change, because it’s not just a question of temperatures rising a few degrees which we in the northern hemisphere erroneously seem to think could be quite nice. We are talking about dramatic changes in rainfall patterns that will devastate crops and leave millions of people facing starvation. If we sit and do nothing then it will be the end of society as we know it.”