Your search found 4 records
1 Hagos, Fitsum; Haileslassie, A.; Awulachew, Seleshi Bekele. 2009. Assessment of local land and water institutions in the Blue Nile and their impact on environmental management. In Awulachew, Seleshi Bekele; Erkossa, Teklu; Smakhtin, Vladimir; Fernando, Ashra (Comps.). Improved water and land management in the Ethiopian highlands: its impact on downstream stakeholders dependent on the Blue Nile. Intermediate Results Dissemination Workshop held at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 5-6 February 2009. Colombo, Sri Lanka: International Water Management Institute (IWMI). pp.185-231.
Institutions ; Organizations ; Water policy ; River basins ; Water management ; Land management ; Watershed management / Africa / Ethiopia / Blue Nile River Basin / Abay River Basin / Tana Sub Basin / Beles Sub Basin
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: IWMI 333.9162 G100 AWU Record No: H042518)
(0.69 MB)
Land and water institutions play a vital role in managing and sustaining land and water resources as well as enhancing economic development and poverty alleviation efforts. While a lot has been done in terms of understanding the micro-determinants of farmers’ decisions in land and water conservation, there is little attempt to understand the broad macro-institutional and organizational issues that influence land and water management decisions. The objective of the study was to assess institutional arrangements and challenges for improved land and water management in the Ethiopian part of the Blue Nile Basin (Tana and Beles subbasins). Focus group discussions and key informant interviews were held in Amhara and Benishangul Gumuz regions with important stakeholders such as the bureaus of Agriculture and Rural Development, Water Resources Development, Environmental Protection and Land Use Administration (EPLUA), National Agricultural Research Systems, and important NGOs, operating in the area of land and water management, and selected community members. As the major findings in this study, we outlined major land and water-related institutional arrangements that are currently in place and their design features, in order to identify those institutions related to superior performance. We highlighted major institutional and policy gaps and actions that are required to respond to emerging issues of environmental degradation, upstream/downstream linkages and climate change. Such analysis of institutions and their design features provides useful insights and contributes to the debate on institutional reform for improved land and water management in the Blue Nile Basin, in general. By doing so, it identifies the gaps in institutional arrangements and policies and potential remedies.
2 Johnston, Robyn M.; McCartney, Matthew. 2010. Inventory of water storage types in the Blue Nile and Volta River Basins. Colombo, Sri Lanka: International Water Management Institute (IWMI). 40p. (IWMI Working Paper 140) [doi: https://doi.org/10.5337/2010.214]
Water storage ; River basins ; Reservoirs ; Ponds ; Tanks ; Groundwater ; Soil moisture ; Wetlands / Ethiopia / Ghana / Africa South of Sahara / Abay River Basin / Blue Nile River Basin / Volta River Basin
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: IWMI 333.91 G100 JOH Record No: H043220)
(1,001.51 KB)
For agriculture there is a continuum of water storage options, ranging from groundwater aquifers, soil water, natural wetlands and small ponds and tanks to large reservoirs. In any situation each of these has its own niche in terms of technical feasibility, socioeconomic sustainability and impact on public health and the environment. Planning storage requires insight into impending needs and also a good understanding of what already exists and what was, and was not, successful, in the past. This report provides an inventory of existing and prospective water storage in the Ghanaian Volta and the Ethiopian Blue Nile basins. It provides as much quantitative data as possible, but highlights both the dearth of readily available information and the lack of integrated planning of storage in both basins. Recommendations are made for improved planning in the future.
3 Kibret, K. S.; Haileslassie, Amare; Mekuria Bori, Wolde; Schmitter, Petra. 2022. Multicriteria decision-support system to assess the potential of exclosure-based conservation in Ethiopia. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 37(S1):S88-S102. (Special issue: Restoring Degraded Landscapes and Fragile Food Systems) [doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742170520000034]
Soil conservation ; Land degradation ; Exclosures ; Decision support systems ; Land use planning ; Ecosystem services ; River basins ; Watersheds ; Lakes ; Water conservation ; Biomass ; Carbon sequestration ; Agroecology ; Erosion ; Models / Ethiopia / Abay River Basin / Rift Valley Lakes Basin
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H049536)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/503FFF1F6BFB3F8140E97071961D2302/S1742170520000034a.pdf/multicriteria_decisionsupport_system_to_assess_the_potential_of_exclosurebased_conservation_in_ethiopia.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H049536.pdf
https://vlibrary.iwmi.org/pdf/H049536.pdf
(1.33 MB) (1.33 MB)
Land degradation is a global challenge that affects lives and livelihoods in many communities. Since 1950, about 65% of Africa’s cropland, on which millions of people depend, has been affected by land degradation caused by mining, poor farming practices and illegal logging. One-quarter of the land area of Ethiopia is severely degraded. As part of interventions to restore ecosystem services, exclosures have been implemented in Ethiopia since the 1980s. But the lack of tools to support prioritization and more efficient targeting of areas for large-scale exclosure-based interventions remains a challenge. Within that perspective, the overarching objectives of the current study were: (i) to develop a Geographic Information System-based multicriteria decision-support tool that would help in the identification of suitable areas for exclosure initiatives; (ii) to provide spatially explicit information, aggregated by river basin and agroecology, on potential areas for exclosure interventions and (iii) to conduct ex-ante analysis of the potential of exclosure areas for improving ecosystem services in terms of increase in above-ground biomass (AGB) production and carbon storage. The results of this study demonstrated that as much as 10% of Ethiopia’s land area is suitable for establishing exclosures. This amounts to 11 million hectares (ha) of land depending on the criteria used to define suitability for exclosure. Of this total, a significant proportion (0.5–0.6 million ha) is currently under agricultural land-use systems. In terms of propriety river basins, we found that the largest amount of suitable area for exclosures falls in the Abay (2.6 million ha) and Tekeze (2.2 million ha) river basins, which are hosts to water infrastructure such as hydropower dams and are threatened by siltation. Ex-ante analysis of ecosystem services indicated that about 418 million tons of carbon can be stored in the AGB through exclosure land use. Ethiopia has voluntarily committed to the Bonn Challenge to restore 15 million ha of degraded land by 2025. The decision-support tool developed by the current study and the information so generated go toward supporting the planning, implementation and monitoring of these kinds of local and regional initiatives.
4 Mengistu, D.; Bewket, W.; Dosio, A.; Panitz, H.-J. 2021. Climate change impacts on water resources in the Upper Blue Nile (Abay) River Basin, Ethiopia. Journal of Hydrology, 592:125614. [doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2020.125614]
Climate change ; Water resources ; River basins ; Models ; Hydrology ; Stream flow ; Precipitation ; Evapotranspiration ; Temperature ; Forecasting ; Surface runoff ; Water yield ; Land use ; Land cover ; Uncertainty / Ethiopia / Upper Blue Nile Basin / Abay River Basin
(Location: IWMI HQ Call no: e-copy only Record No: H050183)
(6.16 MB)
This study assesses the impact of climate change on water resources in the Upper Blue Nile (Abay) River Basin using a regional climate model (RCM), COSMO Climate Limited-area Model (CCLM), coupled with a hydrological model, Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). The SWAT model was calibrated and validated using measured streamflow data from four gauging stations. Climate change projections showed increases in mean annual temperature and decrease in precipitation in most parts of the Basin. Such changes are expected to affect the hydrologic regime of the Basin; these were assessed by running the SWAT model with the past (1981–2010) and future (2010–2039, 2040–2069 and 2070–2099) climate scenarios. The results show an increase of potential evapotranspiration (PET) by up to 27% by the end of the 21st century under RCP8.5 compared to the baseline period. Surface runoff is projected to increase by up to 14%. However, the increase in surface runoff could not increase the total water yield of the Basin. Instead, the total water yield of the Basin is estimated to decrease by -1.7 to -6.5% and -10.7 to -22.7%, for simulations forced by RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, respectively. By the end of the 21st century, the contribution of baseflow to the total water yield of the Basin is also projected to decline to 11.4% from 41.3% during the baseline period. The decrease in baseflow partly explains the decline in the total water yield of the Basin. Such changes in the hydrologic balance will have significant implications for water management in the Basin.
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