This project is about showing whether RMSs are effective. It will seek to quantify the consequences of improved RMS for community livelihoods, resource productivity, land quality, and downstream water quality and siltation. It will specifically measure the downstream, cross-scale consequences of successful innovation in the Ethiopian highlands.

This project will develop methods to anticipate ex ante the likely consequences of introducing improved RMS as well as monitoring and measuring these consequences ex post. Finally, it will introduce methods for adaptive management.

Agricultural intensification of rainfed agriculture (Demeke et al, 1996)– especially of the dominant crop-livestock systems in the Blue Nile basin, management of the natural resource base and poverty alleviation have long been the targets of a vast array of research and development initiatives in the region. Such efforts have ranged from those targeting specific biophysical aspects – crop, livestock or natural resource technologies, to those focused on policy issues to those with a more integrated and market oriented approach.

Assesses the effect (balance or imbalance) of the present relationships between the natural resource base and human activities; examines the role of some potentially destabilising forces, i.e, international markets, government programmes and socio-economic stratification; and reviews government's role in terms of its contributions to prudent natural resource management and options for the promotion of sustainable rural development.