Soil health and forest restoration go hand in hand. When there’s little forest cover, the rains can cause severe soil erosion. Droughts without forest cover, on the other hand, can cause desertification.
In northern Ethiopia, our forestry projects also create microbasins to retain water and build mini dams to reduce erosion. These solutions reduce the intensity of surface runoff and increase soil infiltration and water availability. Not only will they improve access to water for local communities, they’ll also help our tree seedlings to establish and thrive.
Watch how we dig these microbasins to store water in this short video (above).
Other solutions include building dams using stones and sandbags to reduce the speed and intensity of rain floods and rehabilitate existing gullies (below left).
Local communities, here from the villages of Golgolnale and Felegewoyni, get involved with building structures to help stop flash floods and build a system to harvest water during the dry season (below right).
