Green Legacy Fund Receives Parliamentary Nod Eyeing Restoration of Ethiopia’s Landscape

Ethiopia’s parliament has unanimously ratified a bill to establish a special fund worth billions of birr for the Green Legacy Initiative and the restoration of degraded land. 

Dubbed the Green Legacy & Degraded Landscape Restoration Special Fund, the capital pool will amount to between 0.5 and 1% of the country’s annual budget while being open to support from development partners, civil societies, and private actors. Based on the federal budget of this fiscal year including the supplementary amount, somewhere between 7.5 and 15 billion birr would flow to the Fund from the federal government. Regional states are also empowered to allocate matching contributions following approval from their respective councils which has implications for how they receive support from the Fund.

Part of the Fund will go towards enhancing the sustainability of seedlings planted through the Green Legacy initiative, spearheaded by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD). The Initiative started by the PM in 2019 targets nearly 50 billion seedlings to increase forest cover and boost climate resilience. State media outlets reported that nearly 600 million seedlings were planted in a single day in this year’s iteration of the annual event. 

However, reports that Ethiopia’s forest cover had increased to above 23% since the launch of the Initiative did not receive universal acceptance from the House.

Desalegn Chane (PhD), an opposition MP, questioned the figures citing the lack of independent external research to verify the purported amount. While he applauded the Fund’s establishment, the MP expressed confusion about how the House of Federation’s formulations may apply in determining the share of regional states.

“Agriculture and environmental protection bureaus may be more equipped,” Desalegn noted.

Land degradation is the deterioration and persistent debility of the capacity of the land to support humans and other life forms on Earth. One study shows that land degradation is a widespread problem in Ethiopia with over 85% of the land moderately to very severely degraded, and about 75% affected by desertification.