Awareness promotion and experience sharing on the implementation of the UNCCD-NAP to enhance pastoralist areas development in Ethiopia

This paper reports on a workshop held in Ethiopia in 2004, targeting stakeholders involved in implementing Ethiopia’s National Action Plan (NAP) for the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). The workshop was based on international, national and regional experiences, principles and practices related to dryland management and combating desertification to the development of community driven processes. The workhop’s three main objectives were:

• to promote UNCCD–NAP implementation for combating desertification and enhance drylands management for improved Pastoral Area Development (PAD)
• to enhance the understanding and the awareness about UNCCD-NAP at federal level and to strengthen the partnership among all concerned bodies and in particular those at federal level
• to increase the involvement of all concerned agencies and in particular the Pastoral Affairs Standing Committee (PASC) and the Natural Resources Development and Environmental Protection Standing Committee (NRDEPSC) in the UNCCD-NAP implementation.

Major summary recommendations based on the various workshop sessions, plenary and group work report discussions include:

• no new policies are needed, as there are already several policies for starting and promoting pastoralist development programmes
• some related policies require revisiting, upgrading to include and promote pastoralist development and drylands management
• effective coordination and harmonisation among the various organisations working on UNCCD-NAP and other pastoralist development programmes should be encouraged
• intensify institutional and organisational capacity building including womens' empowerment in pastoral areas
• people with the technical know-how should be assigned to provide necessary awareness to the regions
• members of Parliament will follow up the present status of the NAP in addition to accelerating their endorsement at their respective national and regional levels.