Climate change in Ethiopia will not only increase rainfall variability and lead to more frequent droughts and higher risk of rain generated floods, it will also continue to intensify the degradation of soil fertility that causes agricultural productivity to decline. Adaptation measures that build upon improved water management and enhance soil fertility are fundamental in boosting overall resilience to climate change in the Blue Nile Basin.
The growth and transformation plan in Ethiopia purports to continue efforts on adoption and diffusion of agricultural soil and water management technologies which are considered as central to agricultural and rural development. This project therefore aims to enhance the adaptation capacity by analysing the profitability and efficacy of combinations of various soil and water management technologies as well as key barriers for optimal adaptation by building on and analysing an existing panel data set from the Blue Nile Basin that has a focus on climate change in small-scale agriculture. The survey will contain gender differentiated risk experiments to better understand the barriers to adoption. We will then use this analysis as the foundation for a randomized controlled trial on the same sample in the Blue Nile Basin area. In this intervention we will provide the farmers with the analysis from their own plots and how long-term productivity and resilience could be improved. The intervention will be evaluated with a survey - the 4th round of the panel data. The findings from the project will be directly implementable in currently on-going governmental programs, such as the Climate Resilient Green Economy strategy and the 2nd phase of the Sustainable Land Management sector program. The project will include capacity building through post doc, PhD and MSc students as well as training of farmers and extension agents. Furthermore, the methodological approaches and findings will have an impact far beyond Ethiopia through publications in peer reviewed journals and dissemination by the EfD initiative.
