Bonga – On June 29 and 30, agriculture officers, foresters, mining regulators, water engineers, cooperative promoters and urban planners from across the Southwest Ethiopia Peoples’ Region (SWEPR) deliberated on land use and forest management.   

The occasion was a Multi-Stakeholder Consultation and Negotiation Workshop, convened by the Global Green Growth Institute in collaboration with the SWEPR regional government through the Conservation and Sustainable Management of Forested Landscapes (CSMFL) Project, and facilitated by an independent consultancy team. It marked a step forward in how the region is approaching one of its hardest problems; how to grow the economy without losing the forest that underpins it. 

The workshop drew senior political engagement, with Mr. Sebsibe Shaweno, Advisor to the SWEPR regional president, attending alongside zonal and regional sector heads. “This project has been a valuable partner to our region as we work to build the institutions and policies we need for sustainable development,” he said. “This land use plan will give us, for the first time, a shared framework that all our sectors can work from, one that allows us to grow while protecting the forests and resources our communities depend on.” 

Mr. Sebsibe Shaweno, Advisor to the SWEPR regional president

SWEPR holds some of Ethiopia’s most significant remaining forest cover, two UNESCO biosphere reserves, two national parks, and the genetic home of wild Coffea arabica. It also sits at the headwaters of the Abay, Baro-Akobo and Omo-Ghibe river basins. The regional government, established only a few years ago, has already taken meaningful steps to safeguard these assets, including sustained protection of the biosphere reserves’ core conservation zones, but is still building out the broader policy and institutional framework needed to manage the landscape as pressure grows from coffee and tea expansion, mining interest, infrastructure development and a fast-rising population.

Kassahun Kelifa (Ph. D), Lead Consultant

“This is a new region, and there is a real opportunity to put strong resource-governance policies in place from the ground up,” said Dr. Kassahun Kelifa, lead consultant on the assignment. “Communities here have been protecting their forests for years, what they need now is support to diversify their livelihoods so that conservation and economic wellbeing can reinforce each other, not compete.” 

The Bonga workshop was the second major milestone of the assignment. An earlier round of field assessments, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, geospatial analysis and sector consultations across 12 Woredas had already produced a Sectoral Vision and Needs Matrix, a picture of what each sector wants. This workshop was where those competing wants were put on the table together. 

Group discussion

Participants split into breakout groups by interest area, agriculture and livestock, forest and biodiversity conservation, and mining, water and urban development, before moving into direct, facilitated negotiation over land allocation. 

“There is no way that one sector is going to dominate, and the other is going to lose,” Dr. Kassahun said. “In some areas you have to give up land for conservation; in others, land goes to mining or agriculture. It’s a process of give and take, and the goal is a win-win.” 

The workshop sits within the CSMFL Project, financially supported by the Embassy of Sweden and jointly implemented by GGGI and the Environment and Coffee Forest Forum (ECFF), in close collaboration with federal and regional government institutions. Each partner brought a different piece to the table: the regional government’s convening authority and political weight, ECFF’s decades of landscape-level conservation experience in the region, the consultancy team’s technical analysis, and GGGI’s support on process design, institutional coordination and links to national policy and finance. 

Benedict Irwin, Sustainable Landscape Lead, GGGI Ethiopia

Opening the workshop, Benedict Irwin, GGGI Ethiopia’s Sustainable Landscape Lead, framed GGGI’s role as one of long-term partnership rather than a stand-alone intervention. “Ethiopia is one of the few countries who were members from the beginning of GGGI,” he noted, describing an ongoing relationship built around capacity building, institutional strengthening, sustainable finance mobilization and policy advisory work at national and regional levels. 

“This action plan aims to support the government by providing the mechanisms” to move away from a sector-based silo approach, Irwin said, adding that the highly participatory design of the process was a deliberate choice by all partners, “It ensures that all voices are heard and people from all parts of the community are represented.” 

The approach also reflects the direction set out in GGGI’s Strategy 2030, which prioritizes supporting member countries to deliver on their Nationally Determined Contributions and Sustainable Development Goals through exactly this kind of embedded, government-led programming, where the partner organization’s role is to strengthen a process the government owns, not to run it.  

The negotiated outcomes from Bonga will now feed into the drafting of the Integrated Sector Development, Land Use and Forest Management Action Plan by the consultancy team, alongside a proposed governance structure for cross-sector coordination going forward. Once finalized, the plan will be validated with stakeholders before being formally handed to the regional government for implementation, with capacity building, financing mechanisms and decision-support tools for local authorities identified as priority next steps. 

As Dr. Kassahun put it, “At the end of the day, the action plan is not GGGI’s document; it’s not the consultant’s document, it’s the government’s, the people’s document.” 

 End.