PASTORAL AREAS:
Oromiya and Somali Regional States
PROJECT
Managing sustainable and cooperative production of natural gums and aromatic resins in Southern Ethiopia pastoral areas, Oromiya and Somali Regional States.
The general aim of the project is to provide supportive actions to reduce vulnerability and improving livelihood in the pastoral areas of Borena Zone of Oromiya and Liben Zone of Somali Regional State.
These will be achieved through interventions including improved access and management of the natural resources, development of local cooperatives and enhancement of capacities, besides pastoralists’ cooperatives development and improvement.
Boswellia and Commiphora species are very tolerant to extreme aridity and known to bear oleo-gums and aromatic resins (olibanum, myrrh, balsam ) and provide economic, medicinal and ecological significances. The collection and processing of those exudates contributes to endow the local communities with an additional source of income especially during persistent drought periods when all the others resources lack and are also useful for traditional medicinal purposes. Meanwhile such renewable drylands resources management offer protection and sustainable utilization of the natural vegetation considerably preserving biodiversity, restoring degraded sites, providing N-fixation and soil improvement, protecting against wind and soil erosion.
The project implementation will relay on a strong base of IPO/COOPI (Italy) and FRC (Ethiopia) partnership and ample collaboration with the woredas and zonal administration and traditional pastoralist community organizations.
Relevance of oleo-gum resins collection with relation to other activities of household economy in Liben Zone
Taken from: Mulugeta Lemenih, Tarekegn Abebe, Mats Olsson ‘Gum and resin resources from Acacia, Boswellia and Commiphora species and their economic contributions il Liben, Southeast Ethiopia’
The interview results showed that 53.7% of the households interviewed possessed farmlands, 96.6% possessed livestock and 96.4% were involved in oleo-gum resins collection. The shares of the three activities: animal husbandry, oleo-gum resins collection and crop-farming in the household subsistence, as averaged from the estimates provided by the interviewed households were 55.0%±24.1, 32.6%±22.0 e 12.4%±15.3% respectively. These results show that oleo-gum resin collection contributes nearly three-fold more than crop farming to the livelihood of households living in Liben.
pilot activities | eco-tourism
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