Samuel Larsson's blog

Mohamed is a Somali refugee living in Sheder refugee camp in Eastern Ethiopia. Through LWF Ethiopia's involvement in the area he has been trained in nursery management, and now works to replenish the scarce forest coverage in the area - coverage that is put under pressure by the refugee camps' demand for fuel wood.

In Ethiopia local governments, the private sector and development actors have joined hands in replanting Ethiopia’s once vast forests. The initiative is called Greening Ethiopia, and calls for focused efforts to conserve natural resources and reforesting as a response to the impacts of climate change which are becoming increasingly visible in the country. Among the pledges, Ethiopian Airlines stands out with their promise to plant one tree for each passenger.

LWF Ethiopia program has joined the movement, and has set an ambiguous target for 2010. Half a million trees shall be raised and transplanted in the different projects areas during the year. That implies some 100,000 trees in each project, almost double the normal annual target.

Ethiopia has seen a dramatic deforestation during the past decades. Over 90% of all energy consumption comes from biomass, and every year around one percent of the country’s remaining forests are turned into charcoal and houses, or just burned to make room for the ever increasing need for more farmland.

As a result, peoples of the once green and forested highlands of Ethiopia are now struggling with food insecurity caused by severe soil degradation, decreasing harvests, disastrous erosion and reduced drought resistance. It’s a situation which drives farmers to clear even more forests to feed their families – a vicious cycle, indeed.

Except from trying to reforest Ethiopia with actual tree planting, LWF Ethiopia is also approaching the problem from the other end by teaching farmers a sustainable land use. Improved agriculture practices reduce the need to cultivate more farmland. Soil conserving structures such as soil bunds around cultivated areas protect the lands from erosion during heavy rains, and let the soil keep it’s moist in times of drought.

Tree planting, natural resource conservation and agriculture development are all fundamental parts of LWF Ethiopia’s several Integrated Community Development Projects, assisting a few hundred thousands of Ethiopians to develop their communities and adapt to a changing climate. But they are also activities that have spilled over into the organization’s refugee assistance and humanitarian projects, based on the belief that a sustainable environmental lifestyle is the key to reach food security, in the short and in the long run.

This article can also be read on Reuters Alertnet as a part of LWF’s visibility campaign on World Environmental Day (5th of June).

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A saved potetial. Following a LWF development project in her village, this girl now attends school, and her parents can feed their family.

This morning’s sad thought: How many talents, great ideas, world records, peace makers, green inventions, cure for cancer and HIV, etc does the world lose every year due to child poverty?

The question highlights a neglected fact: Poverty has global implications. It affects everyone, not only the poor themselves and their communities. Where would the bounders of science, ethics and politics stand today if all children the last, say, 100 years got enough food and health services to allow their minds to grow to their full potential?

Poverty and hunger deny some 20% of all children proper mental development. Would we have had 20% more of everything otherwise?

Filed under: English, Ethiopia, Great ideas! | No Comments »

LWF Ethiopia Newsletter - 1st quarter 2010

Yesterday LWF Ethiopia distributed its first quarterly newsletter. It is a two page publication sent out to all our supporting agencies, partners, friends, etc. It features the latest and liveliest stories and photos from our projects and our hope is that it will help bring the hardships and the successes of the communities closer to our supporters.

The newsletter will be distributed electronically on a quarterly basis. If you want to be on the send list, just send an email to samuel[a]luthworld-et.org

You can download the newsletter here (pdf 0.7Mb)

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As the rest of the world celebrated Water Day this week, LWF experienced severe problems with our water delivery in Sheder, one of the refugee camps we are involved in.
An old pump installed as a temporary solution broke down permanently the other week. The shiny new pump we procured in December has still not even reached the country, since the (only) supplier lack foreign currency to import it. These out-of-our-control factors of course put further strains to the already quite complicated task to cater for some 8 000 peoples’ basic needs.
In the meantime we have to truck water from our bore hole down to the camp. It works in the short run, but is an expensive and fragile business. We have two trucks working 24/7, but if one break down water supply is down to half. And since the short but intense rainy season has started, the muddy and slippery road up to the bore hole is really challenging the truck drivers’ skills.
While we are struggling to find a solution, we are hit from left right and center. The refugees complain over curtailed access to water since the truck inevitable deliver water to fewer places in the camp than the normal piped water system does. UNCHR asks questions since they have the overall responsibility. The host community asks why their share is decreased, etc, etc. And the ones facing all these questions are of course our field staff – already working day and night to ensure a decent water supply.
So, please bear with us during these challenging times.

On the other hand, however, we are finalizing an extension to the water system in both Sheder and Awbare (the other camp nearby) allowing the hosting community to enjoy the same clean water as the refugees do. Sharing resources with the surrounding community helps avoiding conflicts, and fosters a good relationship between the two sides. No one sees an end to the conflict in Somalia and the refugees are most likely there to stay. So we must contribute to a sustainable situation. Sharing water – a truly scarce recourse in the Somali desert – with the locals is doing just that.

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LWF Ethiopia Annual Report 2009

LWF Ethiopia proudly presents its 2009 Annual Report!

The report is a colorful introduction to LWF Ethiopia’s various areas of work, and a recap of successes and challenges during the year. It features photos from all projects, articles, statistics and even geographical coordinates so you can pinpoint some of our project sites. Pay us a visit – virtually or in real life!

You can download a low resolution pdf here (1.8 Mb)

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LWF Ethiopia started the new year with a workshop for all program and finance staff. After the Ethiopian Christmas on January 7, some 50 staff members from all filed offices came together in Addis Abeba for three days. It was great to meet everyone, have time to talk and exchange ideas. Among other issues, the classic problem of making finance and program units walk hand in hand were addressed constructively. This effort will hopefully improve LWF Ethiopia’s reporting procedures in the future. Also, the recent introduction of a new PME officer – Endeshaw Mulatu – promises improved reporting.

Other areas covered were communication, finance management, climate change, IT and community participation. The workshop ended with one full day of qualified leadership training for managers and program coordinators.

The interesting thing about this workshop was that not one single external expert or consultant was engaged. Three days of qualified knowledge sharing was covered by internal capacities only. The LWF Ethiopia staff possesses great capacities and skills, and the future method in our staff capacity development efforts will be to make better use of them. Each staff member is encouraged to share what s/he has, and receive what others have. Breaking the internal “skills isolation” and update each other on our respectively areas of expertise will definitely make us a more productive and efficient team. And allow us to build more capacity with less recourses.

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"There will be no snow in Africa this Christmas"

Listening to one of the most known Christmas AND heal-the-world-songs ever recorded I don’t know if I shall laugh or cry.

Do They Know It’s Christmas?, written by Bob Geldof and performed by Band Aid in the 80s, is one long negative advertisement for Africa and its peoples. Being the fund raising idea of the time, the song may be forgiven. But who came up with the idea to re-record it a few years ago? And why is Bono among the famous British singers hired for the project? He should definitely know better.

In communications there is a term called place branding. It is the idea that a place, country or even a continent can be explained to people – advertised – in different ways, giving people different images of that place that influence their mindsets and actions. And in the long run hence also impact the place itself.

And the way Africa is presented in the song – a harsh place without water and agricultural future, with crying helpless people under a fierce sun – I’m sorry to say, is not helping Africa’s case much.

I mean, who is tempted to invest in a continent where “nothing ever grows, no rain nor rivers flow”? And how can you start to believe in a self reliant, dignified and shriving African continent if you are only encouraged to “give a little help to the helpless” that live in “a world of dread and fear […] underneath that burning sun”?

Devastating place branding, that is. And, I’m again sorry to say, that is the image of Africa we have been fed with for a long time, not only by Band Aid: A helpless, needy and passive people. Dwelling on dry, infertile lands. A hopeless future. “Feed the world” has been the call because the only thing we really can do to keep “them” alive is to deliver more food aid. (Then at least the poor hungry people will “know it is Christmas time”!).

Most off you know this is all rubbish. Of course here are needs and problems, but also peoples with strong visions about the future, and enough fertile lands to feed the entire population. What has not been here in the past is a fair opportunity to build on these rich resources.

I think that the only relevant question raised in the lyrics is “if the table was turned would you survive?” recognizing the often very difficult circumstances under which many people live in Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa. And not only live, but hold their heads high with pride!

So let’s leave that kind of degrading fund raising ideas behind, and start to look upon Africa as a continent of hard work, dignity and with prospects of a bright future. And realize the moral and legal responsibilities of the rich world towards a people with capacities to change their own future.

…but it is a catchy song. You can listen to it here (but please ignore the silly lyrics)

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Recent voices from the LWF assisted communities:

Asked about what improvements LWF Ethiopia’s intervention have brought about, farmers in Abaya shared that they nowadays “are not just storytellers about what have happened elsewhere, but witnesses of our own potentials.”
They used to hear over the radio about harvests produced elsewhere. Harvests of 40 to 60 bags of maize per hectare. In Abaya, the average harvest gave about four to five bags per hectare.
But that was before LWF introduced improved seeds and started to teach modern agriculture technologies: “What we only used to hear about, we are now doing ourselves. The project has made us winners!”

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In response to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Ethiopia, members of ACT International in Ethiopia (ACT Ethiopia Forum, AEF) have issued an appeal covering 70,000 people. The appeal target is USD 3,254,386 for three months.
LWF Ethiopia is one of the implementing agencies, requesting 257,596 to reach 7,000 people in Goro and Dawe Kachen with humanitarian assistance.
The total population in need of humanitraian assistance in Ethiopia during the fourth quarter was recently estimated to be 6,2 million.

You can download the whole appeal here: Response to Drought (AFET 91).

Please note that the appeal is still pending, and is not officially published by ACT head office in Geneva.

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No more Countdown to Copenhagen – the UN climate change summit has started. Africa accounts for just 3,7% of the total CO2-emissions, but for millions of Africans the effects of climate change are not just a future threat, but today’s harsh reality. While waiting for the outcome of the summit, let us share an example of how LWF Ethiopia is working to mitigate the effects of a changed climate.

Drought preparedness in Dawe Kachen
In Dawe Kachen the effects of a changed climate is evident. Drought has increased, rainfall has decreased, and a large proportion of the pastoralists’ livestock has died. Recurrent and intensified droughts have led to environmental degradation, notably the depletion of natural resources. Acute and chronic food and water shortages plague the communities. Funded by DanChurchAid and EU, LWF Ethiopia implements a project in Dawe Kachen that aims to strengthen people’s capacity to prepare for drought, to develop water resources for use in time of drought, and to improve livestock health.

Dawe Kachen's next generation are now better equipped to meet future challenges. Photo: LWF/M. Ölund

Preparing for the future
Climate change will most likely lead to further deteriorated living conditions in drought prone regions as Dawe Kachen. People who already are suffering from drought will suffer more in the future. The changing weather will not necessarily go along with reduced average amount of rain, but with more irregular rainfall patterns: short downpours combined with long-lasting droughts. Therefore, it is essential to make maximum use of the rain water by storing it for periods of droughts. Hence, rainwater harvesting is a key part of the LWF project. The water is “harvested” from larger areas surrounding the ponds (called catchment areas) which normally are established in small depressions, so that the water can run into the ponds by gravity. The project has constructed three large ponds with the total capacity of 68,000m3 (68 million liters). Ponds are traditional methods of saving water in the area but since droughts have become more frequent and severe, larger ponds are needed to store water for longer periods of time. The construction of the ponds will mean that water is available during the dry periods and make it possible for the communities to stay in the area instead of migrating to other areas. Grasses and shrubs were planted around the pond catchments areas to stabilise the soil and minimise soil erosion. The grasses and shrubs can also be used as animal fodder. Additionally, rainwater is harvested from the roofs of schools and health facilities and stored in reservoirs. The water will be used for human consumption and for livestock in prolonged dry periods.

Mitigating an unfair burden
In pastoralist communities, women normally spend more than 14 hours a day engaging in household work. The gender division of labor in pastoral areas is unequally distributed due to cultural norms. The additional burdens facing families during periods of drought fall more heavily on women than on men. The recurrent droughts have increased their workloads with most women having to walk to far off rivers to fetch water. At the same time they have fewer pack animals, to help them carry the load, since most of their camels and donkeys have died. Pond construction reduces their workload, since rain water is harvested and is available for human use and their livestock.

An edited version of the text was recently published by ACT International in a book about best practices to meet climate change challenges.

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