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Good practice Imported

Ethiopia's Church Forests — Community Wall-Building to Protect Sacred Afromontane Forest Islands

Ethiopia · Bahir Dar · See the Ethiopia profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 76% 33/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Ethiopian Orthodox churches guard the last fragments of northern Ethiopia's native forest, which has shrunk from 45% to under 5% cover. TREE Foundation and local clergy have catalogued 106 church forests and completed protective stone walls around 17 of them.

106
Church forests catalogued
17
Forests with completed protective walls
99
Woody-plant species recorded at richest site (Gedamselase)
Ethiopia's Church Forests — Community Wall-Building to Protect Sacred Afromontane Forest Islands

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
TREE Foundation; Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church; Debre Tabor University; California Academy of Sciences
Period
2009-present
Keywords
sacred natural sites, forest conservation, community stewardship, religious land management

Context

Northern Ethiopia's forest cover has fallen from about 45% in the early twentieth century to under 5% today. The only substantial remnants of native Afromontane dry forest are small patches surrounding Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo churches, some documented at over 1,000 years old.

Activities

Since January 2009, a partnership between forest ecologist Alemayehu Wassie, Meg Lowman and the TREE Foundation has catalogued 106 individual church forests across the Lake Tana region; 28 sites identified as highest-biodiversity were prioritised for protective dry-stone walls built by local communities to keep out grazing livestock.

Results

As of the latest tracked data, 17 of the 106 documented forests have completed walls around their full perimeter, with several more partially built. Wassie's peer-reviewed 2007 PhD research found the forests hold a disproportionate share of the region's surviving native and endangered plant species compared with surrounding farmland.

Conclusions

Many of the 106 catalogued sites remain unwalled, and several are already fully deforested, meaning the window for protection has already closed at those churches; no independent data yet quantifies the forests' carbon storage or watershed effects.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k) — NGO/philanthropy-funded wall-building; not a formal government payment scheme.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years) — Partnership running since January 2009; ongoing.
Staffing & skills
TREE Foundation, Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church clergy and communities, Debre Tabor University

Conditions for success

  • Continued buy-in from clergy and surrounding communities rather than formal legal protection
  • Prioritising walls for the highest-biodiversity sites first

Common failure modes

  • Many catalogued forests remain unwalled; some already fully deforested
  • No independent quantification of carbon storage or watershed effects

Commonly funded by

Philanthropic / foundation funding

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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