The potential loss of the planet’s ecosystems has become a top priority on a global scale. For this reason, the central theme of this year’s World Environment Day, celebrated on June 5, was Ecosystem Restoration.
In this sense, Social Promotion Foundation joins the line of Spanish cooperation to prevent and reverse environmental degradation, in order to achieve the goals set in the 2030 Agenda.
Moreover, Ethiopia, the country where we are implementing one of our agreements financed by AECID in consortium with the NGO Rescate and two local partners, ECC-SDCOH (Ethiopian Catholic Church-Social Development and Cooperation Office of Harar) and Havoyovo, is one of the places that suffers most from the impact of the consequences of climate change, experiencing a very high level of environmental degradation.
Therefore, within the framework of the agreement, the aim is to sustainably restore the degraded local environment through the incorporation of physical, biological and mechanical measures. In this way, the purpose is to guarantee both soil and water conservation, as well as an increase in biodiversity. Another fundamental aspect included in the objectives of the agreement is to raise awareness among communities and local authorities of the importance of environmental issues. This will ensure the training and capacity building of the community fabric in the Somali Region, access to productive resources for vulnerable groups and the strengthening of knowledge on the sustainable management of agricultural and livestock farming practices.
In order to achieve these objectives, numerous activities have been carried out over the past year:
On the one hand, new climate-smart agricultural technologies have been adopted, such as the creation of nurseries for improved seeds or the construction of water harvesting infrastructures. At the same time, new sustainable practices adapted to climate change have been included, such as irrigation systems and well rehabilitation.
Also, private and communal lands have been recovered after desertification and erosion. For this purpose, fodder roots and seeds of multifunctional trees (more than 42,000) have been produced. With the same objective, land reclamation has been carried out through the construction of dams, terraces and ditches.
Lastly, rights holders have benefited from capacity building in natural resource management, conservation and environmental protection of their environment through training, campaigns and participatory awareness-raising workshops, which have already been attended by more than 1,300 Somalis.
Along the same lines, on June 4, on the occasion of the commemoration of World Environment Day, our local partners invited technicians from the agricultural office and 5 community representatives (elders, women, youth, religious and members of the administration) from the woredas of South Jjijiga and North Jijiga to one of the degraded areas rehabilitated through physical and biological measures within the framework of the agreement.
The objective of this activity was to involve these people in the positive effects, giving them the opportunity to learn about best practices and thus act as agents of change and multipliers of the activities carried out.
Thus, in the Shebele kebele, theoretical interventions on sustainable management were carried out, with the participation of a total of 73 people, followed by a tour of the rehabilitated land, presenting the measures introduced: more than 10 species of multifunctional trees and fruit trees, as well as fodder seedlings.