Afforestation in Ethiopia: Would Community and Household Tree Planting Imply More Wood Being Available For Fuel?

Because of the deforestation that has occurred over many years scarcity of fuel wood is a critical problem in Ethiopia. As a result peasants have switched to crop residues and animal dung for fuel, which deteriorates the land further. The Ethiopian government identified two-pronged policy strategy to stem deforestation and the degradation of agricultural lands ¿tree growing or afforestation, both at community cum household levels, and dissemination of more efficient stove technologies. The assumption underlying the tree growing strategy is that at least a significant part of whatever is planted will be used as fuel wood. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of the afforestation strategy as a remedy to the country¿s fuel problem using a datasets from sample cross-sections of 500 households and 100 communities in the highlands of Tigrai, northern Ethiopia. Our findings suggest that it might not be the case that whatever planted transpires into being used as fuel.