Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether community-based wildlife conservation can potentially be added in rural farmers’ investment portfolio to diversify and consequently reduce agricultural risk.

Design/methodology/approach – The correlation coefficient is computed from national data on the rates of return on agricultural production and wildlife conservation, to find out whether wildlife conservation is a feasible hedge asset.

Las ECAS contribuyen a mejorar la calidad de vida de las familias productoras rurales a través de la capacitación vivencial, la educación de adultos y el aprendizaje por descubrimiento. Así se promueve la
experimentación y observación, el análisis grupal de resultados y la toma de decisiones.

Water resources are essential to human development processes and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals that seek, inter alia, to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal literacy, and ensure environmental sustainability.

Currently, there is a general dichotomy in rural development policies. This dichotomy between extension-driven adoption of modern inputs on the one hand, and community-driven local public goods on the other hand, is particularly evident in the highlands of Ethiopia. Despite the obvious trade-offs between these two approaches, the target populations seldom get the chance to express their preferences for them.

"The contribution of sustainable agriculture and land management to sustainable development" - This brief discusses the potential for sustainable agriculture to contribute towards sustainable development with a particular focus on developing countries. It briefly describes different sustainable agricultural practices and the extent of their adoption, identifies constraints to their further adoption, and presents some actions and policy options that could accelerate the widespread adoption of sustainable agricultural practices.

In this paper, we study the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) in Ethiopia in order to see how it has affected households’ investment and disinvestment in productive assets. The PSNP is the largest currently operating social protection program in sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa, and its impacts and effectiveness are therefore important both in their own right and because they have implications for similar but smaller programs elsewhere.

The link between institutional and market failures, rural poverty and environmental degradation suggests a ‘win-win’ policy intervention: relax local ‘constraints’ and achieve poverty alleviation and environmental goals.

This in-depth look at key development issues facing Ethiopian households in context of the Millenium Development Goals uses survey data from 2000, 2002, and 2005. Ethiopia is making progress, but household incomes are shockingly low and hugely varied. Assets could potentially help smooth consumption, but the current property rights structure where land is owned by the government excessively limits households' options and makes it impossible for land to serve as a true, functioning asset.

The revitalization of Machakos, Kenya, from overpopulation and resource degradation—seemingly by its population growth—has added another round to the Boserupian vs. Malthusian debate, and may make Machakos unique.

This study investigated Machakos’ improvement by looking at the role of social capital with principal component analysis and found significant differences between Machakos and two other Kenyan regions, particularly in the formation of associations.