Vol. 5 No. 1 (2023): Re-visiting community based participatory watershed management: Challenges, opportunities and its linkage with smallholder farmers’ ecosystem service awareness in Southern Ethiopia

Ethiopia is endowed with abundant natural resources and valuable biodiversity. However, natural resource degradation and biodiversity losses in response to unwise management have been challenging and creating critical economic and social problems in Ethiopia. Previous efforts to curb the problems have not been successful as expected. Most often, physical works have received major emphasis, while the human components are mostly overlooked. To assess and re-visiting the challenges and opportunities of community-based participatory watershed management (CBPWM) and its linkage with smallholder farmers’ ecosystem service awareness, five districts (Wonago, Abaya, Dilla Zuriya, Yirgachefee, and Kochere) were selected. A crosssectional survey design with two sampling stages was used. Likert with three scales (agree, neutral, disagree) was used. A purposive sampling technique was used to select kebeles from the five districts. A stratified sampling technique was also used (based on agro-ecological zone: Humid, Semi-humid & Semi-arid) to assess the linkage of smallholder farmer’s ecosystem service (ES) awareness with CBPWM. Three hundred (300) farmer respondents were selected using simple random sampling techniques from the selected AEZs, Districts, and Kebeles. The result shows that farmer’s perception of change in environmental conditions has improved over the decades since the start of CBPWM. Their understanding of the environmental condition has also improved the benefits earned from CBPWM like increasing household income, social ties and security, women empowerment, and skill development. The result also shows that farmers had limited access to CBPWM plan preparation, training, evaluation, and monitoring activities in their local area. Moreover, there is a limitation of adequate resource allocation (in terms of materials, labor, and finance) and application of appropriate and site-specific technologies at each kebele level where active CBPWM works exist. Though there are challenges, almost all respondent farmers had a good awareness of ecosystem services (ES), whose livelihood depends on. Almost in all agro-ecological zones, ES has shown declining trends in the study area.
To restore declining ES in the study area, different agro-ecological zone-based measurements have been
applied. The result implies that CBPWM work needs serious attention from all stakeholders to achieve its
envisaged mission of building a climate-resilient green economy in Ethiopia. Moreover, conservation and
participation-based land management is a means to obtain ecosystem goods and services sustainably.