Natural resource management and Title II food aid : an evaluation

480 Title II-supported food aid and natural resource management (NRM) activities implemented by NGOs in Ethiopia. The evaluation is based on field visits to project sites and covers a period from program start-up in the mid-1980s through 10/94. NGO projects are making a difference, providing a beacon of hope for countless rural Ethiopians, who, in turn, are responding enthusiastically in a country-wide effort to rehabilitate the nation. However, NGO planning capabilities remain wholly inadequate for estimating both realistic food aid demand and the magnitude of land-use problems and opportunities. Until NGOs improve in this area, they will find it difficult to justify continuing requests for USAID assistance. Tree-planting has generally been successful, but is not a panacea for Ethiopia's land use problems. In areas of high population density, it can result in zero sum situations where displacement of livestock may exacerbate overgrazing and accelerate erosion elsewhere. There are also the persistent problems of mismatching species to sites and choosing mixed plantations, both of which reduce the effectiveness of tree-planting. Attention should be given to harvesting and marketing the products of tree plantations. Soil and water conservation efforts are too narrowly focused on structures for containing run-off and erosion and should be rethought to incorporate efforts to improve soil quality. Food aid policies for these interventions (which are best carried out on a catchment basis) must be clarified to ensure that local people do not come to regard the interventions as either employment opportunities or the responsibility of third parties. Also, NGOs are not fully utilizing the full range of technical conservation interventions, and NGO activities are not of sufficient quality to guarantee even a short-term impact. In the area of agricultural development, the improvement of staple crop productivity is being largely overlooked. Diversification, though important, may have little impact, given average land holdings. Construction of earthen dams and similar small-scale irrigation works, by contrast, seem to be increasing productivity. Unfortunately, professional expertise, which is rarely available at the NGO level, is needed if such works are to be effective. Additionally, food aid should be replaced by efforts in micro-entrepreneurship to promote self-reliance. Food aid programs are not adequately addressing livestock issues, especially overgrazing. Field staff seem overworked by the excessive number of projects and may lack the time needed to consider the qualitative dimensions of planning, participation, and impact assessment. Additionally, the NGOs do not have adequate opportunities to meet and exchange experiences about their essentially similar efforts. Consequently, lessons learned are being lost. Some of the lessons learned are as follows. (1) Food aid promotes an intervention-oriented approach to rural development, particularly where it is used as Food for Work. This may be counterproductive to finding a wider array of solutions to problems. (2) A number of projects have clearly reached the point where regular food aid can be suspended, although other forms of continued support should be considered. (3) Program (though not food aid) dependency is an issue which the NGO community must confront, along with the need to de-link food aid as a form of direct payment for rural works. (4) The logistics of food aid deliveries needs to be taken into account in project planning. (5) Popular participation is a basic and early step towards defining project objectives during the planning process. Special attention should be given to training project personnel in participatory development mechanisms.