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Mitigating Drought: Policy Impact Evaluation: A Case of Tigray Region, Ethiopia

Asheber, Sara Abebe (2010) Mitigating Drought: Policy Impact Evaluation: A Case of Tigray Region, Ethiopia.

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Abstract:Recurrent cycle of drought is one of the greatest challenges facing the Ethiopian poor in general and the study region in particular. The complex nature of drought in the study region took the lives of people; entail loss of assets in the form of crops, livestock, and productive capital and threatened the lives of millions of people with starvation. Majority of the droughts had a drastic impact on agricultural out-put, with total crop failure and massive livestock deaths being recorded in many parts of the study region. Furthermore, the capacity of the rural poor to cope with drought has declined due the increase frequency and intensity of droughts. Thus, this study looks on the effectiveness of government toward achieving the intended goals of reducing household vulnerability to the effects of recurrent cycle of drought; protect and improve household and community assets so as to prevent poor households from falling further towards destitution; rehabilitating the environment and breaking the cycle of dependence on food aid based on data collected from governmental bodies and field survey carried out in six Tabia’s of the Atsebi- Womberta and Enderta districts of the study region. The findings of this study show that recurrent cycle of droughts have impacts on crop production, women health and education. Furthermore, the temporal analysis of vegetation change also showed that drought has a fundamental impact on vegetation. It is observed that there are encouraging activities carried out by the government to address causes and impacts of drought. It is also found that government’s interventions are effective solutions in mitigating the root causes of drought in the study region. The irrigation interventions are becoming a drought proofing strategy in the region. Furthermore, the study revealed that productive safety net programs are playing a significant positive impact in household and community asset creation, employment generation and thereby increasing household’s income. The before-and-after assessment study based on remote sensing data further confirmed that there is positive changes in the vegetation cover over the past periods, which validates the effectiveness of government policy instruments put in place to rehabilitate the degraded environment. Besides, the findings of the probit regression show that government policy intervention has protected household distress sale of basic livestock to acquire food. In general findings of the study reveal that considerable progress has been made throughout in improving the livelihoods of the rural poor. The overall findings of the result shows that governmental interventions carried out has been achieving its intended objectives and are effective in addressing causes and impacts of drought thereby improving the resilience of the poor. Key Word: mitigation, drought, safety Net, and policy effectiveness
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:ITC: Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation
Programme:Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation MSc (75014)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/92389
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