Exploring the socio-economic impacts of community based rehabilitated watersheds: an experience from Wera district, Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

In developing countries, research evidence on the socio-economic impact is a crucial issue in motivating and encouraging community-based restoration of degraded watershed ecosystems. This paper focuses on exploring the socio-economic impacts of rehabilitating a watershed area in two villages (kebeles) using two independently pooled cross-sectional data sets. 240 households were selected at random to provide the data. Half of the households (120) were randomly chosen from the records of the rural land and agricultural development office in 2007 and the other half (120) were randomly selected and interviewed in 2022 using semi-structured questionnaires. Our results show that the contribution of the restored area to the economy of the local communities dramatically increased between 2007 and 2022. The main economic activities encountered in the restored area are fuelwood collection, the harvesting of construction wood, collecting grasses, and harvesting fodder, which are practiced by 75%, 68%, 59% and 41% of sampled households in 2022, respectively, while the same activities were practiced by 5%, 0%, 0%, and 2.5% households in 2007, respectively. Rehabilitation intervention also created job opportunities, and strengthened social networking among local households. These findings can help government and non-government stakeholders those implement ecosystem restoration by enhancing community-based rehabilitation of watersheds.

KEYWORDS:

• Ecosystem services
• land degradation
• livelihoods
• restoration
• watershed

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Ethiopian Forestry Development, Hawassa Center and Wera districts agricultural offices for financial and logistic support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Kebele is the smallest administrative unit area in Ethiopia.

2. This group of soils have a moderate infiltration rate when thoroughly wet. These soils consist chiefly of moderately deep or deep, moderately well drained or well drained soils that have moderately fine texture to moderately coarse texture. These soils have a moderate rate of water transmission.