Ethiopia’s Climate-Resilient Green Economy Strategy.

This Climate-Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) Strategy is a nationwide document aiming at achieving a middle-income status by 2025 while developing a green economy to avoid the negative effects resulting from the increasing in GHG emissions and unsustainable use of natural resources. Reaching this goal will require (i) boosting agricultural productivity; (ii) strengthening the industrial base; and (iii) and fostering export growth. The document follows a sectoral approach based on the following four pillars: (1) improving crop and livestock production practices for higher food security and farmer income while reducing emissions (2) protecting and re-establishing forests for their economic and ecosystem services, including as carbon stocks; (3) expanding electricity generation from renewable sources of energy for domestic and regional markets; and (4) leapfrogging to modern and energy-efficient technologies in transport, industrial sectors, and buildings. It follows that implementing these initiatives would also offer important co-benefits, such as it would improve public health, through better air and water quality, and would promote rural economic development by increasing soil fertility and food security.
To help eliminate hunger and food insecurity, the Strategy focuses on (i) increasing the agricultural crop production, from around 19 million tonnes today to more than 71 million tonnes in 2030, mainly through the increased fertilizer usage and an increase in land used for agriculture; and (ii) increasing the productivity of livestock, a swell as farmland, rather than increasing the cattle headcount.
In order to make agriculture and forestry more productive and sustainable, main interventions will be directed to (i) increase animal value chain efficiency via higher productivity of cattle (for both meat and milk) and an increased off-take rate (decreasing the age at which livestock are sold) (ii) introduce better feeding techniques to the pastoralist herd, together with the consequence of an emissions' reduction from cattle; (iii) intensify and prepare new land by means of small-scale irrigation to medium- and large-scale irrigation schemes; (iv) generate clean and renewable electric power to allow the replacement of trucks by electric rail or diesel pumps by electric pumps for irrigation; (v) reduce wood requirements thanks to efficient stoves; and (vi) protect and re-establish forests for their economic and ecosystem services
Rural poverty reduction will be faced through (i) increasing soil fertility, food security, and rural employment higher energy efficiency – especially from more efficient cooking/baking and transport, with savings worth up to 10% of household income; (ii) efficient stoves and switching to bio-gas stoves to increase the available income of the relatively poor rural population; (iii) expanding to rural areas the Green Cities and Buildings STC which at the moment only including urban areas; and (iv) increasing the low-emitting animals (poultry, sheep, goat and fishery) that are high protein suppliers as well as high sources of income.
To enable more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems, the Strategy envisages to (i) improve the market infrastructure; (ii) improved market efficiency through the establishment of milk collection and processing centers in strategically selected milk shed areas; and (iii) increased dairy value chain efficiency through aggregation of smallholder production in cooperatives, as well as supply of improved feed and feeding systems for a sub-group of farmers.
The resilience of livelihoods to disasters will be improved through (i) a net reduction of GHG emissions to be combined with the economic growth (i.e. expanding electricity generation form renewable energy, reducing off-grid fossil fuel energy use, introducing abatement initiatives in the cement factories that use outdated technology that is not only energy inefficient, but also causes high emissions from the production process); (ii) an improved early-warning systems for extreme weather conditions; and (iii) protect and re-establish forests to increase GHG sequestration.
As for the Governance, the principle is a permanent institutional setup to use existing institutions and responsibilities in order to minimize requirements for funding and organizational reform. This shortens the time needed for recruiting and ensures the high quality and fit of the staff. The Government has also set up fast-tracked initiatives for implementation since they offer the chance to immediately promote growth, capture large abatement potential, and attract available climate finance for implementation.