Forests are home to many species of flora and avi-fauna ranging from micro- organisms to huge trees and mammals. Destroying the forests means loosing about fifty percent of the global diversity and the functions they perform.
Eritrean terrestrial biological resources have undergone diversified threatening and distracting scenarios over the past century. During the Italian colonial period, terrestrial biological resources were heavily exploited either through direct or indirect uses. Direct use being the felling of trees and the killing of wildlife, and indirect use being the wholesale clearing of all vegetation in order to favour agricultural development.
The successive colonial powers, towards the second half of the last century, did no less damage to terrestrial bio-diversity than their predecessors did because they followed the same path of the previous colonial powers but on a more magnified manner.
The end result of these negative attitudes towards conservation and sustainable use is that Eritrea remained with a degraded landscape and a depleted wildlife resource. To add insult to injury, protracted war and drought have also had their shares in maintaining these negative conservation attitudes.
At present, many plants and wildlife species have either become extinct from the Eritrean soils or are endangered. These situations are, to say it loosely; very challenging in as far as future conservation efforts and sustainable uses are concerned. However, the clear indicators at the policy level and the Eritrean people’s commitment to uphold this challenge, will no doubt help to pave a reasonably solid conservation highway, provided that institutional mandates and legislation related to conservation are instituted quickly and with no ambiguity.
Maintaining forest bio-diversity in Eritrea requires development of appropriate management programmes to enhance sustainable utilisation and management of forest resources. However, factors such as poverty, population growth, desire to increase in per capita income and other pressures put severe strain on natural resources including forests.
The conversion of forests and woodlands into croplands has become a primary agent of the depletion of biological resources in Eritrea nowadays. Overgrazing and fuelwood collections also contribute quite considerably to the loss of biological diversity. It is evident that Eritrea’s economy is primarily based on agriculture, at least at present and for the coming foreseeable future. Eventhough agriculture is the mainstay of future economic growth of the country, it should not be perpetrated at the total expense of natural ecosystems, which are by no means abundant in Eritrea. Therefore, indiscriminate expansion of agricultural activities into forests and woodlands that could be unsuitable for agriculture but essential for watershed protection and bio-diversity conservation need to be controlled.
It is true that economically efficient, socially equitable and environmentally sustainable land use is very difficulty to achieve but some courageous measures have been taken towards this end, even if such measures may appear unpopular.
The bulk of the energy used in Eritrea comes from woody biomass resources almost exclusively from the Western Lowlands. The substitution of fuelwood by other alternative energy sources like electricity and butane gas is timely and appropriate but, taking into account the current economic conditions this logical option is not for tomorrow. However, the promotion of improved cooking stoves and the use for more efficient combustion technologies in rural industries depending on fuelwood can contribute in minimising the pressure on woody biomass energy.
The resettlement programme for returnees compounded by the relatively high population growth rate in Eritrea is adding another critical dimension to the already difficulty situation in the efforts of conserving natural ecosystems and biological resources.
There is clearly the need to develop a national system of protected areas which is specifically designed to address bio-diversity conservation needs as they are playing a role in conserving representative of most of the country’s vegetation types. The Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) has conducted preliminary assessments of known and potential wildlife areas, with a view of establishing a network of protected areas to conserve key habitats and wildlife populations. The initial reconnaissance has provisionally identified some key areas for conservation. These are the Gash-Setit, Semenawi Bahri, the Buri Peninsula in the south eastern edge of the Northern Red Sea Region and the Yob and Nakfa in the northern parts of Eritrea.
At present there is financial and foreign exchange gap. With a low per capita income and wide spread poverty, Eritrea’s ability to mobilise sufficient domestic savings to finance required investments is limited. Export earnings are also inadequate to provide the foreign exchange necessary to import the machinery, equipment and essential production inputs that are critical for achieving rapid economic recovery and growth. In the coming two decades these gaps need to tackle through well-planned mobilisation of internal and external financial resources and more aggressive export development programme.
In Eritrea there is lack of accurate and inadequate information and data on many fields. Although improvements have been made over the last few years there is still a great dearth of relevant, timely and reliable economic and social information. Population census has never been taken since independence, and the one, which was taken before independence, does not cover the whole country because of accessibility. Population census must be taken soon in order to be able to forecast. In general there is a gap of information in almost all fields especially in forestry therefore efforts must be made narrow and ultimately avoid the gap. The aim for the coming years will be to enhance the free access and smooth flow of information within and outside the sector.
The prevailing livelihood strategy in Eritrea is based on rainfed cereal cropping. Given the conditions of the natural environment, the pressure on land and the unfavourable market relations there is no way that sustainable economic growth can be achieved merely through improvements in rain fed cereal cropping. In the next two decades it may be envisaged that cereal cropping will mainly be undertaken in the higher potential areas whereas in the rain fed areas there should be increasingly change towards more diversified land use systems including forestry plantations and higher value crops based on water harvesting and irrigation practices.
In general land based developmental economy does not pay off hence the development policy must be reoriented to the development of services and industrial sector in the coming two decades. The country should develop the different sectors step by step and in relation to its financial sources and trained manpower. Land based projects must be formulated in such a way to alleviate poverty, to have crosscutting issues, cost-effectiveness and sustainability.
The majority of the Eritrean people live in rural areas and in the coming two decades development of the rural areas will continue in a concerted effort. Developing rural areas minimises the movement of rural people to urban areas. The implementation of the new land tenure system is very important to the development of the country and in the next two decades this will be implemented.
In the next two decades efforts will be made to improve the living conditions of the pasturalists and agro-pasturalists.
There is a severe shortage of appropriate human capital because of the impact of the occupation and war. In the next two decades a concerted national effort aimed at increasing educational and skill development opportunities for all consistent with absorptive capacity of the economy.
Decades of occupation and war resulted in destruction and neglect of the limited technological base that existed. During the short-term, these technological and managerial gaps can be mitigated by importation of both physical and human capital. Over the long-term, the solution lies in accelerated national human resources development.
In the next two decades sound standards and regulations will be adopted and enforced covering many aspects of developments.
In nowadays because of lack of proper appraisal valuation the contribution of forestry to GDP is small. Appraisal valuation of the different forest produces has to be done again so that its contribution to the GDP is reassessed.
If within the next two decades an increase of investment, proper resources management, participation of private sectors in many of the economic fields is not encouraged, agricultural crops and animal resources are not made to improve, the life of the pasturalists and agro-pasturalists are not made to improve, and the new land tenure policy is not implemented, given the climatic conditions of the country exacerbated by the population increase and low standard of the population, the rate of deforestation will increase substantially which leads to the conversion of a large portion of the country in to a desert or a semi-desert condition.
