Matching land and water interventions with community needs: Report of community focus group discussions in four watersheds in Ethiopia

Abstract

The ‘Nile 3’ project of the Nile Basin Development Challenge (NBDC – http://www.nilebdc.org) has developed feasibility maps, which are maps that combine biophysical suitability with willingness of adoption, both for single rainwater management practices as well as for combinations of practices at landscape scale. The biophysical suitability is based on suitability condition identified through experts and literature, whereas willingness of adoption is computed based on actual data from a farm household survey (IFPRI) from 2005. To validate these maps, the project needs to understand adoption and non-adoption of rainwater management practices and strategies. A multi-scale approach to capture dynamics from farm and landscape scales was chosen. To capture the farm scale, 600 farmers in 7 different watersheds of the Ethiopian Blue Nile were chosen (2 from the NBDC project). In the 4 new watersheds (Gorosole watershed (Ambo) and Laku watershed (Shambu) were chosen in Oromia as well as Maksenit watershed (Gonder) and Zefie watershed (Debre Tabor) in Amhara region), focus groups were run to capture the landscape scale. These focus group discussions brought together key informants from the community and asked them to imagine the best possible rainwater management strategy for their watershed and then discuss what hampers the implementation of that strategy. This report brings together the information collected during the focus group discussions and transect walks and serves as reference for the validation process