Improving climate resilience of the community and Ecosystem through IWRM in the Ziway Shalla Lakes Sub-basin (PPCR_ZSSB)

Abstract

Executive Summary The Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR), funded by the African Development Bank (AfDB), focuses on integrating climate resilience into development strategies, which is titled Improving Climate Resilience (CR) of the Community and Ecosystem through Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM), and targets a 496 ha watershed with 500 households located in Meskan Woreda, East Gurage Zone Administration of the Central Ethiopia Regional State in the Ziway-Shalla Lakes Sub-basin (PPCR_ZSSB). The sub-basin faces a number of challenges, such as environmental degradation, water resource depletion, sever soil erosion, dwindling of crop production per meter square, poverty and population growth beyond the carrying capacity of the resources, and hence the pilot project aims to strengthen the climate resilience of communities and ecosystems in the ZSSB through CR-IWRM. The project has been implemented by thorough community participation from site selection, problem identification, and pilot activity execution to decision-making. Besides, daily expert monitoring, practical field training, providing inputs, stakeholder engagement, and ensuring fair economic share across the gender to create a sense of ownership and ensure sustainability of activities started are among the instruments used as an approach during implementation. This comprehensive intervention has resulted four-volumes of situation assessment draft report and submitted to external and internal reviewers, and 227 beneficiaries organized into legally certified different user groups which have been working on income-generating activities (IGA) such as honey production, solar pump irrigation, handcraft, avocado, coffee, enset, rosemary, fodder, and energy-saving stove production. Women are exclusively owned handcraft and energy-saving stove production user groups, and their membership share is kept high in the rest of the intervention as well to enhance their climate resilience thereby empowering economically. The situation assessment report went well as planned, and the validation workshop will take place on 05 August 2025. The pilot activities have been implemented successfully with full participation of beneficiaries and concerned local government offices, and all the IGA activities are blooming to provide fruits in their gestation period; gullies are healing, and soil erosion is retarded. Most deliverables are on the verge of finalization except the field demonstration and final report. In fact, field demonstrations also started, and firm follow-up from HoAREC continued to wrap up activities as planned and hand over to local government structures on time. Because of the nature of restoration activities, full-scale impacts on water resources, livelihoods, and the restoration of degraded environment are not expected in one year implementation period, and more impacts are yet to come after 3 to 4 years. Scaling up best practices captured during the pilot project implementation to the wider community, and strengthening already started IGA activities are recommended to continue i.e emphasizes continuation of pilot activities to assure attainment of expected impacts.