Guideline for Integrated Watershed Management Data Collection: National Standard

With a population surpassing 100 million, Ethiopia is a country whose economic growth heavily depends on agriculture (CSA, 2016). The country has diverse topographical, geological, geomorphological, and hydrological conditions – creating diverse agroecological zones where the central, southeastern, and northern highlands are hilly/mountainous draining to lowlands. Because of the rapid increase in population, most of the agricultural land is occupied and limited land is left for agricultural production in the highlands, except through integrated hillside/mountain development. Smallholdings for agriculture are highly fragmented and degraded, leading to low agricultural productivity and associated water scarcity and food insecurity. The natural ecosystems (e.g., forest, shrub, grazing land/rangeland) are alarmingly converted to agricultural production even on marginal hillslopes. As a result, our perennial streams, reservoirs, and drinking water supplies are being degraded and threatened. Integrated watershed management (IWM) is a key approach to sustaining agricultural economic development and maintaining natural resources. We need to protect and restore environmental quality in our agricultural production systems, river basins, and other land uses. The government recognizes that the complex interactions of natural and human systems (continuous crop cultivation, deforestation, steep slope cultivation, unregulated water withdrawals, erosion and sedimentation, competition for land uses, non-point source pollution, etc.) coupled with unregulated/unplanned expansion of human settlements into fragile ecosystems have been creating new management problems that cannot be addressed by business-as-usual practices. Human modifications of land and water directly affect the delivery of water, sediments, and nutrients, and thus fundamentally alter terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Such unregulated and unplanned management is also contributing to hazards and disasters such as mass movements, flooding, extreme drought, and associated problems. Addressing all the problems that concern land, water, vegetation, and other ecosystem resources of a watershed in any way comes under watershed management strategies. The government therefore developed the Ethiopian Strategic Investment Framework (ESIF) for sustainable land management (SLM) and determined that a comprehensive watershed management process would be the most efficient means to address these problems (MoARD, 2010).