Forest Resource Accounts for Ethiopia

Abstract

Ethiopia is a natural resource dependent country that needs an assessment of its natural resources for the sustainable use of the country’s resources as well as to facilitate the formulation of effective and integrated environmental and economic policies. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth has for long been the key indicator for macroeconomic policy-making. However, national income accounts suffer from the major limitation that they focus mainly on goods and services that are bought and sold in markets and ignore nonmarketed services such as those provided by natural assets. As a result, there is inconsistent treatment of man-made capital and natural capital. Capital goods like machinery, tools and equipment are valued as productive capital and are written off against the value of production as they depreciate. However, no account is made for the depletion or degradation of natural resources: they are viewed as a ‘free gift of nature’. In addition, no account is made for growth in natural capital (e.g. through tree planting and natural regeneration). On the other hand, in the present system of national account (SNA), changes in man-made capital (i.e. investment) are recorded and form part of the GDP/GNP. The failure to capture properly the accumulation and depletion of ­natural resources in the SNA leads to generation of incorrect measures of economic performance and wellbeing such as the rate of savings and capital formation.

This study was conducted under the Natural Resource Accounting in Eastern and Southern Africa project coordinated by the Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy in Africa (CEEPA) of the University of Pretoria and funded by the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida). Analysis and opinions expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not represent the views and position of the project funding and coordinating institutions. Find original reports of the Sida NRA project studies at: www.ceepa.co.za.

Appendices

Appendices

1.1 Appendix 1: Definitions of Forest Strata in Ethiopia

WBISPP has used the definition of Friis (1992) who defined ‘forest’ as ‘a relatively continuous cover of trees, which are evergreen or semi-deciduous, only being leafless for a short period, and then not simultaneously for all species. The canopy should preferably have more than one story’.

The WBISPP defines woodlands as ‘a continuous stand of trees with a crown density of between 20 and 80%. Mature trees are usually single storeyed, although there may be layered understoreys of immature trees, and of bushes, shrubs and grasses/forbs. Maximum height of the canopy is generally not more than 20 m, although emergent may exceed this’. Open woodlands have between 150 and 400 stems per ha, whilst dense woodland has more than 400 stems per ha.

Shrublands are defined as ‘a continuous stand of shrubs with a crown density of between 20 and 100%. There may be scattered individual trees with a crown cover of less than 20% or scattered clumps (i.e. less than 0.5 ha) of trees (as modifiers)’. Dense shrublands have more than 1,000 stems per ha, whilst open shrubland has between 999 and 400 shrub stems per ha. Scattered trees within the shrub layer are classified according to three categories of stem density: densely scattered between 80 and 149 stems per ha, moderately scatted trees between 40 and 79 stems per ha and sparsely scattered less than 39 stems per ha.

Bushland is a general term for low tree-high grass vegetation occurring in semiarid or seasonally arid regions (ICRAF Agro forestry Database).

1.2 Appendix 2: Detailed Physical Forest Resource Accounts for Ethiopia for 1995 and 2005 (National Level)

Table 2A Forest area accounts in ha

Table 2B Physical forest volume accounts in m³

Table 2C Physical carbon accounts in ton C

1.3 Appendix 3: Detailed Monetary Forest Accounts for Ethiopia for 1995 and 2005 (National Level)

Table 3A Monetary forest accounts in ETB

Table 3B Carbon monetary accounts in US$