1 ENVIRONMENT STRESS AND INCREASED VULNERABILITY TO IMPOVERISHEMENT AND SURVIVAL IN RURAL ETHIOPIA: A SYNTHESIS FROM EXISING EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE1

Households living in ecologically fragile and marginal areas are vulnerable to climate-based production and income shocks, and high transitory poverty and food insecurity consequently as evident from large downward variability in food consumption and periodic famines. There are recurrent processes underlying the persistence of famine conditions: (i) degradation of natural resources in its different manifestations (i.e., increased aridity and frequent droughts, soil erosion and fertility decline, moisture stress); (ii) deterioration in crop income marked by declining productivity, increased production variability and thinning in crop diversity; (iii) weakness in livestock to buffer income in time of crop failure (coincides with decline in livestock production, increased disease and heightened death); (iv) insufficiency of other sources of income and assets to compensate for loss in crop and livestock incomes (other income sources are often positively covariate with agricultural income and covariate to common shock); (v) non-resilience of rural markets under distress (often tend to cause large deterioration in terms of exchange); and (vi) thinning of options for smoothing consumption including publicly provided safety nets. The case of Gurageland is illustrative that conditions of environmental stress, population pressure and impoverishment do not necessarily translate into famine where rural infrastructure and markets are better developed, income sources are diversified into non-local and non-covariate income sources, and support networks are resilient. However, the fundamental development challenge of overcoming structural poverty still remains in rural Ethiopia at large. 1