Restoring indigenous trees in the Ethiopian Montane woodlands

Planting and maintaining trees across thousands of smallholder farms increases carbon storage within a landscape that has experienced widespread historical deforestation. As the trees mature, they remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store carbon within their biomass, while increasing vegetation cover can help protect agricultural land from further degradation. Importantly, farmers have a direct financial interest in maintaining healthy trees through the project's carbon revenue model, helping connect long term carbon storage with benefits for participating households.

Restoring tree cover across a fragmented agricultural landscape helps bring greater ecological diversity back to areas where much of the original forest has been lost. The project plants a variety of species, with native and food bearing trees forming an important part of the planting mix alongside commercially useful species such as eucalyptus. Increasing tree cover can provide additional habitat and improve connectivity for wildlife, while tree roots and vegetation help stabilise soils, reduce erosion and improve overall ecosystem health. Integrating trees into farms also allows these environmental benefits to develop without removing productive agricultural land from local communities.

The project utilises Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) techniques alongside traditional forest establishment and supplemental planning to restore root stock and promote rapid forest recovery. The project is actively working to reduce soil erosion and local flooding, stabilising degraded slopes, protecting fragile water catchment areas, and improving the regional water supply by maintaining subterranean streams. Over a 15-year period, 87 native tree species have been documented and conserved within the project area, this exceeded the aim of 40. These native trees serve as a refuge for local and migratory species and work to improve connectivity between fragmented forest resources.

The project has been established with seven community cooperative societies, granting them legal land user rights ownership over the communal project land. The project has created 195 regular (full-time and part-time) jobs and livelihoods for community members through operation and management of forestry cooperatives, unions, and cooperative run businesses. The project encourages women’s participation and leadership, resulting in women holding 22% of the managerial roles within the various management cooperatives. As the forest recovers from historic degradation, local populations are provided with an income stream through the sustainable harvesting of forest resources. The controlled pruning and thinning activities generate an increasing supply of fuelwood, providing between 1.6 and 1.9 tonnes of fuelwood per hectare annually for community use. 

The project is working to build capacity by conducting extensive training, racing a total of 1,031 participants during the third monitoring period (2017-2021). The training covered forest management, carbon stock estimation, biodiversity monitoring, bird survey techniques, value chain development, and conservation.