Ethiopia’s national parks are working for wildlife – but not always for the people living near them

Protecting nature and reducing poverty are often treated as separate global challenges to be solved. But in many parts of Africa, the same land is needed for conserving nature and for people's food security and livelihoods.

Ethiopia is one of the most important centres of crop diversity in Africa. It is where several crops were first grown. Hundreds of crop varieties have evolved in Ethiopia over thousands of years. They provide valuable genetic traits that help scientists breed crops that can better withstand drought, disease and climate change.

About 70% of Ethiopians rely on farming, grazing and natural resources for their livelihoods. But the country also has a long history of food insecurity, including famines that killed up to one million people.

We are a team of conservation scientists who research issues at the intersection of agrobiodiversity, food security and protected area conservation in Ethiopia. Can conservation and food security go hand in hand? A nationwide study from Ethiopia reveals the trade-offs.

We set out to discover whether Ethiopia's protected areas are actually working for nature and for people. We also wanted to find out what these protected areas tell us about the real world challenges of meeting global biodiversity targets.

To do this we compared changes over time between protected and similar unprotected places. We combined satellite images showing how the land was being used with information on poverty and food security. We collected this data from surveys of more than 3,000 households across Ethiopia from 2011-2016.

This is the most comprehensive study ever carried out on Ethiopia's protected areas because it examined conservation from several different angles at once. It assessed how well protected areas represent the country's ecosystems and species, how effectively they prevent habitat loss, and how they affect the food security and livelihoods of nearby communities. It also included the views of Ethiopian conservation experts – the first study to bring this together in a single national assessment.

Our research found that communities living within 10km of a protected area were more likely to go hungry and experience a decline in their living standards than similar households elsewhere. To establish this, we compared similar communities. We asked what life might have been like if a protected area had never been created nearby. We matched communities that were alike in almost every way, except that one was close to a protected area and the other was not.

By tracking how they changed over time, we could estimate the effect of living near a protected area, rather than simply showing that the two happened to be linked.

Our research therefore argues that the success of conservation cannot be measured solely by how well biodiversity is protected.

Our findings show that without greater investment in supporting the livelihoods of communities living alongside protected areas, the global push to conserve 30% of the planet by 2030 risks being built on a foundation that is neither equitable nor sustainable.

Protected areas bring benefits, but not for everyone

Ethiopia has 79 protected areas covering 9.4% of the country's land surface. These areas include national parks and community conservation areas. Most are now managed by regional governments, with key national parks under the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority. Our study estimated that around 18 million people live within 10km of the protected area network.

We found that Ethiopia's protected areas reduce tropical forest loss. They also prevent land from being taken over for farming and help maintain grasslands. They house a large proportion of threatened species and those that are only found in Ethiopia.

These include the Ethiopian wolf, Gelada monkey, big-headed African mole rat, Walia ibex, yellow-fronted parrot and others. This is an incredible achievement given limited resources and capacity available for conservation.

However, we also found that these environmental gains have come at the cost of wellbeing and food security for communities living close to protected areas.

We found that people living within 10km of a protected area were more likely to go hungry. They were also more likely to see their living standards worsen than similar households living farther away.

On average, households living within 10km of a protected area experienced just over one extra month without enough food over the five years from 2011 to 2016. Across the estimated 3.2 million households living this close to protected areas, that adds up to about 3.9 million extra household-months of food shortage.

Our study did not identify exactly why this happens. One likely explanation is that Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa, with rapid population growth and as families grow, rural subsistence farmers expand their farms to grow more food. Households living next to protected areas have fewer opportunities to do this because nearby land is protected, making them more vulnerable to food shortages over time.

Meeting global conservation goals fairly

To meet the global goal to protect 30% of the world's land and oceans by 2030, Ethiopia will need to turn more land, including terrain currently being farmed, into protected areas.

For example, the Ethiopian montane grasslands and woodlands are home to many endemic highland species but are also one of the most agriculturally productive parts of the country.

The Ethiopian conservation practitioners we surveyed told us that improving existing protected areas was far more important than expanding them. They were acutely aware of the costs of protected areas to local people. They highlighted competition for land for food and nature as a central issue.

Encouragingly, there are already examples of what better conservation can look like. Several protected areas performed better than similar unprotected sites for both nature and nearby communities. For example, the Yayu Coffee Biosphere Reserve protects forest and also enables people to harvest wild forest coffee. This shows that local livelihoods can be compatible with conservation.

How can conservation work for people and nature?

Conservation organisations should focus not only on protected areas, but also on the nearby communities that often lose farming land and income when a nature reserve is set up.

To do this, they should work with agricultural ministries and development organisations. Protected area managers cannot solve biodiversity loss, land-use conflict and food security on their own.

Bigger conservation budgets produced better results for wildlife, but not always for neighbouring communities. Funding should therefore also help local people by sharing conservation benefits and compensating them for the costs of protecting nature.

Conservation can generate long-term public benefits. Those receiving the benefits should therefore provide long-term funding and support to the rural communities bearing the greatest costs.

Conservation trade-offs are not side-effects to manage later – they are central to whether global biodiversity goals can succeed.

_(Gebremeskel Gizaw,Joe Langley, Ermias Lulekal, Joseph D. M. White, Adèle N. Rowlands, Tariku Geda, Kumara Wakjira, Fekede Regassa, Sebsebe Demissew, Feleke Woldeyes, Julia P. G. Jones, and Robert J. Smith co-authored the research that this article is based on).

James Borrell receives funding from a range of UK research councils and Philanthropic Funders.

No disclosure statement

Bezawit Genanaw and Sophie Jago do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

By James Borrell, Research Leader in Agrobiodiversity and Conservation, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew And

Bezawit Genanaw, Lecturer and Researcher And

Sophie Jago, Researcher in agrobiodiveristy and conservation at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew And

Wendawek Abebe Mengesha, Associate Professor, Addis Ababa University