The Forest Management Project (IFMP)

Since 2005 the Integrated Forest Management Project Adaba-Dodola (IFMP) has become a unit under the GTZ-Sustainable Utilization of Natural Resources (GTZ-SUN) for Food Security Oromia program, a new arrangement under the Ethio-German development cooperation programme.

The GTZ-SUN Dodola office is a technical cooperation project of the Governments of Ethiopia and Germany which started in 1995. Its mission is to develop a feasible approach for the conservation of natural forests in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia.

A model for participatory, community-based forest management is being implemented by the project in the Forest Priority Area of Adaba-Dodola located on the northern slopes of the Bale Mountains adjacent to the Bale Mountains National Park.

The core element of the conservation strategy concerns granting exclusive usage rights to forest dweller associations (WAJIB), thereby regulating the access to the apparently ownerless forest resources. At the same time, tree growing outside the natural forest is supported in order to reduce the pressure on what is considered by illegal wood collectors as common property. The generation of alternative income, which forest dwellers can derive from non-wood forest products, is to further reduce the pressure on precious forest resources. One such income source is tourism.

A common vision has been developed among stakeholders on how to sustain the WAJIB approach beyond the German support. To this end, practical steps have already been taken in fine-tuning the approach and making implementation possible within the capacities of the counterpart organization. The implementing counterparts, Oromia Agricultural and Rural Development Bureau (OARDB) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) have agreed that the contribution of GTZ will gradually decrease and that of OARDB will gradually increase up to 2006 to ensure local ownership. Currently the WAJIB groups are forming “forest conservation cooperatives” as an umbrella organization at village level and “forest user groups union” at higher levels for a better status and institutional strength. For more information about GTZ see www.gtz.de