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From Ethiopia:
Integrated Approach Helps “Model Farmers” Increase Productivity
›By Schuyler Null // Thursday, March 24, 2011To reach the village of Grar Gaber from Addis Ababa, you drive up over the Entoto Mountains overlooking the capital then motor down two hours of new Japanese-built highway to the town of Fiche. From there it’s 20 minutes on a broken dirt road across rocky hills. I was joined there by about 20 others from the PHE Ethiopia Consortium’s general assembly (see also day one and day two coverage) and Population Action International, to visit an integrated population, health, and environment (PHE) development program run by LEM Ethiopia.
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The two-hour trip from the capital gives a first-hand look at Ethiopia’s environmental issues: The land, which has historically been fairly heavily populated by pastoralists and farmers, is noticeably degraded. Bare hillsides are carved by erosion, fields and piles of rock hint at the shallowness of the topsoil, and what little trees remain are non-native eucalyptus, which were introduced in the late 19th century to combat deforestation.
Grar Gaber
In Grar Gaber, home to 5,671 people, LEM Ethiopia has been working for five years to fill in the gaps between the different government health, environment, and agricultural initiatives serving the community, said Executive Director Mogues Worku.Bogalech Zawde, one of the village’s health extension workers, showed us the list of more than 950 “model farmers” that have received combined health and agricultural training developed by LEM. In addition to information on child and maternal health, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and sanitation, the “model farmer” training provides information on optimal seed varieties (often supplied), planting techniques, and land and water management. The farmers are expected to then train their peers and report back to Zawde.
There are 30,000 health extension workers like Zawde across Ethiopia, averaging two per village, said PHE Ethiopia Consortium Director Negash Teklu. At LEM sites, they get extra help to implement cross-cutting environment and livelihood efforts, in addition to health services. In this way, LEM’s work supports the existing government structure, said Worku.
“What we’re doing is bringing together the health, agriculture, and Environmental Protection Authority workers so we can integrate the various components,” said Teklu, and help the different government ministries communicate more effectively with one another and the community.
“Model” Results
The results were impressive: We visited four households that had received and implemented LEM training. At each, the farmers pointed to marked improvements in their lives since the training. Thatched-roof, mud-walled huts stood next to new sturdier, steel-roofed houses, some with improved cook stoves inside, others with electricity and even TV.
One farmer, Obbo Mulugeta, told us how he’d started planting an apple seed variant from Spain he’d been given by LEM that was better suited for the climate and altitude – and worth more than his previous crop, to boot.Another couple reported that after switching from one cow feed to another, they’d increased their average milk yield from two liters to nine. And now that they’re using family planning, the wife said with a grin, she had much more time to be “productive.”
Other farmers echoed her praise of family planning: A female farmer who worked her plot alone said she had 12 children (one adopted) and probably would have 13-15, if not for the family planning resources provided by LEM. Another farmer, who had eight children, said the biggest change from his grandfather’s time was the shift in number of children desired. Previously, children were seen as a sign of wealth, like livestock, but now land scarcity makes this untenable, he said, and he doesn’t expect or want his children to have as many kids as he did.
LEM is also working closely with the Ministry of Education to help build on these gains. School officials glowingly recounted how they worked with LEM to encourage environment, health, and girls’ clubs at both the primary and secondary level. The kids help run a tree nursery at the school, from which seeds are distributed. Children also bring back lessons learned about climate change, sustainability, disease, and sanitation to their households.
Room to Grow
Despite the impressive results, Worku said, challenges remain. Two of the biggest limitations are financial and human capital. Skilled personnel are rare; for example, Zawde is currently the village’s only the health extension worker because her partner is on maternity leave and no replacement was sent. This challenge is compounded by the fact that most villagers will not come to the clinic for treatment; she has to go house-to-house to visit patients.
Though the population, health, and environment model works well in Grar Gaber, there is a great deal of room to grow across Ethiopia. LEM is working in three woredas (districts) and other members of the PHE consortium are working in 26 more – but there almost 500 woredas across the country.
The role of LEM Ethiopia and other NGOs in the PHE Ethiopia Consortium is to “take the facilitation role,” said Worku. “We have to influence the decision-makers” in order to bring the benefits of the integrated approach to more communities.
See all of New Security Beat’s coverage of the 5th annual general assembly of the PHE Ethiopia Consortium.
Sources: PHE Ethiopia Consortium.
Photo Credit: Schuyler Null/Wilson Center. -
From Ethiopia:
The Continuing Challenges of Integrated Development
›By Schuyler Null // Sunday, March 20, 2011“How are we going to feed all these mouths?” asked Bekele Hambissa, director of the Environmental Protection and Development Organization in Addis, on day two of the PHE Ethiopia Consortium general assembly (read about day one here). Environmental resources are directly tied to Ethiopia’s population growth, said Hambissa, during a discussion of balancing efforts to address population growth, environment, and livelihoods. While poverty alleviation is an important goal of population, health, and environment integration (PHE), it must be environmentally sustainable, he said.
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The diversity and scope of the activities presented by eight of the consortium’s most active members was striking.. Each operates in a different part of the country, from the highlands of Tigray region in the north and Oromia in the south and central part of the country, to the coffee-producing Southern Nations and Peoples in the southwest. Though all the programs integrate some aspect of population, health, and environment in their development efforts, each emphasizes different aspects more than others and have differing implementation methods.
Farms, Forests, and Family Planning
LEM Ethiopia, headed by Mogues Worku, works in parallel with existing government infrastructure to provide sustainable income-generating opportunities and reproductive health services to women in three woredas (districts) across the country. The southern woreda of Wonago is very densely populated and severely eroded, he said, with up to 3,000 people per square kilometer. Along with agricultural training to produce “model farmers” in each community, LEM also suppers poor women by providing chickens and beehives, with one beehive capable of producing of to 45 kilograms of honey each year. These environmentally friendly alternative income sources help local families who often run short of money after the annual coffee harvest or have seen decreasing crop yields due to changing weather patterns, he said.LEM also provides reproductive health and family planning services (RH/FP) through government clinics. Since they first started working in their target woredas two years ago, access to RH/FP services has dramatically increased from 14, 18, and 25 percent to 65, 65, and 80 percent, respectively.
The Relief Society of Tigray (REST), by contrast, integrates PHE via watershed protection plans across several woredas in the north. REST focuses their health efforts on school programs, hoping to increase students’ awareness of RH/FP, HIV/AIDS, and basic sanitation.
The Movement for Ecological and Community Action (MELCA), working in the Bale Mountains in the south, also heavily engages with youth through schools, but focuses mainly on reforestation around the Bale Mountains National Park. Befekadu Refera, program head of MELCA, said they have planted more than 60,000 indigenous trees so far, and, thanks to active youth groups, they have increased the prevalence of all forms of contraceptives.
Data for Donors
As impressive as these numbers are, said Linda Bruce of the BALANCED Project, “it’s extremely important to continue to collect data.” Without statistics, integration is a tough sell to donors who’ve never seen PHE programs in action, she said.
Anecdotes are not enough, especially to prove the cost-effectiveness of the PHE approach, said Roger-Mark De Souza of Population Action International. He advised the consortium members to demonstrate it with data. “We have to be very rigorous and critical in our approach, to hold each other accountable,” he said.
Some members saw a lack of interest and understanding by donors, who often want projects to meet specific objectives that often don’t match up well with the broad results of PHE. Bruce and De Souza said that better communication of existing programs’ results might help alleviate this reluctance.
More and more donors are becoming interested in integrated development, said Jason Bremner, but “we need to know about your projects” to increase that interest. To that end, the members agreed they need more detailed surveying and better coordination between organizations around the country.
Strong Local Support
Despite the challenges, all members reported immediate impact and strong local support for their programs. Shewaye Deribe, program officer for the Ethio Wetlands and Natural Resources Association – which has helped rehabilitate more than 22,000 hectares and provide improved FP/RH services to more than 30,000 people – told the audience about an impoverished farmer with a very small plot of land and eight children, none of whom were able to complete high school because he could not feed them. “Learn from my example,” the man told Deribe.
Integration is naturally present in every community, said Worku. Farmers do not consider their land, family, or income in isolation; the only way to meet their basic needs is through a multi-disciplinary approach.
See all of New Security Beat’s coverage of the 5th annual general assembly of the PHE Ethiopia Consortium.
Photo Credit: From right to left, Befekadu Refera of MELCA, Haddis Mulugeta, and Roger-Mark De Souza; and below, a stack of logs in the village of Gele Gaber. Schuyler Null/Wilson Center. -
From Ethiopia:
“Better Bang for the Buck” With the Population, Health, and Environment Consortium
›By Schuyler Null // Friday, March 18, 2011Hello from Addis Ababa, where I am blogging from the 5th annual general assembly of the Population, Health, and Environment (PHE) Consortium of Ethiopia (see further coverage here). Along with the Philippines, Ethiopia is the largest PHE programmer in the world, both in terms of number of programs and people affected, and for good reason: The country combines dire need, willing donors, and a great deal of local capacity and will.
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Ethiopia is currently home to 85 million people – second only to Nigeria as the most populated country in Africa – and the average woman has 5.4 children, according to the Population Reference Bureau. Ethiopia is also extremely rural, with only 16 percent of the population living in cities, which, combined with its rugged terrain, poses challenges for delivering health services and improving land management.
The PHE Ethiopia Consortium is a coordinating body made up of 48 organizations that implement integrated PHE development programs at more than 30 sites across the country. At the general assembly, more than 80 members from around the country reported on their efforts to improve livelihoods and communicate the effectiveness of integrated development.
“We all know where Ethiopia lies in terms of global poverty and environmental degradation indicators,” said PHE Ethiopia Consortium Executive Director Negash Teklu. “Almost 100,000 tons are being eroded from our soil every year.”“Evidence supported by research is one of our main organization goals,” said Teklu. The consortium’s role, he said, is to help member organizations better coordinate with each other and strengthen the kind of relationships that integrated PHE development requires, both with each other and with donors. He also said the community needs to better connect the work that NGOs do with government objectives and programs.
Haddis Mulugeta of the Institute of International Education in Addis pointed out that integrated PHE advocates should beware of spending too much effort criticizing the broad sectoral structure of government at the national level, as it’s essentially an inevitability. Instead, members should concentrate on building community support and encouraging better communication between government ministries on these issues at the local level.
“Integration must start at the community level; they are the true integrators,” said Ricky Hernandez, a representative from PATH Foundation Philippines now working in East Africa. The engagement of community members determines not only the impact of the project on health, environment, and livelihood indicators, but also, most critically, its sustainability.
Jason Bremner of the Population Reference Bureau, speaking on the state of PHE across Africa and globally, showed a data chart created using Hans Rosling’s Gapminder tool that tracks the progress of poverty and life expectancy indicators over the last 50 years. He pointed out that the “world is a better place today in many ways.” But, he said, the PHE community must get better at communicating its successes. “Even by the best case scenario we will be 8 billion by 2050…and if nothing changes…we could be as large as 12 billion,” he said.
The UN’s medium variant projection estimates Ethiopia will have 174 million people in 2050 – more than twice the current population. The high fertility estimate, which projects a slower decline in total fertility, puts total population at 196 million people. Pointing to Ethiopia’s ambitious health and environment targets – such as the government’s goal of reaching zero carbon emissions in the next 15 years – Teklu said that injecting PHE integration into existing development efforts is a great opportunity to provide “greater bang for the buck.”
“Our target is improved livelihoods,” said Teklu, and to harmonize the relationship between people and the environment.
Stay tuned over the next few days for more on the challenges facing the PHE community here in Ethiopia, a look at some local PHE sites, and the community’s plans for the future.
See all of New Security Beat’s coverage of the 5th annual general assembly of the PHE Ethiopia Consortium.
Sources: Population Reference Bureau, UN Population Division.
Photo Credit: Schuyler Null/Wilson Center.
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