Forum for Social Studies (FSS)        A New Initiative in Ethiopia  

 Towards the Development of Environment-friendly Agricultural Land Taxation System in Ethiopia

By Daniel Kassahun, PhD (Environment Researcher, FSS)

 Executive Summary of the Project Proposal

Several studies had addressed the existing land degradation levels at a considerable depth and breadth. Despite their heterogeneities in objectives, approaches, scales, materials and the methodologies, the immensity and soberness of land degradation is a the centerpiece of those reports. By all standards, such trends had been echoed unsustainable and its impact on the physical, social and economic milieu has often been projected pessimistically.  

To tackle the ongoing degradation problems in Ethiopia, peasants, governments, NGOs and researchers had attempted differently. The response of peasants had ranged from employing endogenous measures to a colonization of forest/grasslands and marginal lands into farmlands. Significant numbers of peasants had subjected to incessantly fragment and mine their lands to the brink of uneconomical and unproductive level with ultimate abandonment of lands.  

Governments, in its part, had ambitiously run SWC campaigns. Despite the successful results at the outset, the effort couldn’t maintain its momentum for long time. Moreover, the overall impact was very little when compared to the hopes and expenses it received. Another ambitious effort was promoting a massive resettlement program. It was again a failure as none of its envisaged objectives were met. NGOs had also promoted SWC and showed promising outcomes. However, compared to the magnitude of land degradation problem in the country, their share is quite negligible. Besides, their efforts are criticized to have inculcated “dependency syndrome”. Numerous researchers (local and international) had studied the problem and embodied plentiful of recommendations. Of all the recommendations, the question of land tenure has been an outstanding issue in a bid to arrest the massive land degradation in Ethiopia.

Despite all those efforts, soil degradation along with its multifarious impacts is taking its tall. Lands are degrading more than ever before; its productivity is persistently declining, vulnerability of farmers to natural and manmade causes has become a norm than exception; land-induced tensions and conflicts are recurring more often than before. As long as EPRDF and the existing Constitution are in power, land tenure remains to be a “dead issue”. This circumstance poses a bitter paradigm shift on the response of academicians to the problem. Although the debate on land tenure will undoubtedly continue, researchers should expand the realm of remedies which is consenting to the policy framework of the statues quos. Then, what kinds of options do researchers have at their disposal which is to be accepted both by the government and peasant community? So far, there hadn’t been any particular incentives prized to the environment-friendly peasants for their effort to combat land degradation problem. Rather they had been victims of faulty-government policy measures, which imposed indiscriminately on the entire farming community.  

This project proposal throws a new light of policy strategy to implement sustainable land management practices in Ethiopia, where the current degradation problem could realistically be regulated. It introduces a system, called differential land taxation (DLT), where lands are liable to different taxation levels. DLT is to be determined by rating the level of accord or discord between the recommended land management options (by the local community and experts) and the adopted land management practices (by farmers). DLT, an environmentally-friendly taxation system, would be the outcome of two consecutive steps: the first is evaluation of land; recommendation of the land utilization type and the management to be adopted for the sustainable use of each land unit. The second step involves the determination of variable level of land taxes, where peasants adopting the recommended option could benefit a discount land tax (even up to zero-taxation), and on the contrary, those who cultivate against the recommendation would be liable to pay enhanced tax. In both steps, the community in conjunction with local experts would conduct the evaluation and tagging of DLT.  

The output of this project is expected to ascertain if DLT could regulate the land management problem in the country. Therefore, relevant information will be generated from focused group discussion with peasants, local/regional land and finance experts. Selected districts characterized by land degradation problem and had a track of government and NGO’s activities would be considered from the Amhara and Oromia Regional States. As DLT is well-suited for hot debate, open discussions would be carried out by professionals through panels and online debate. The output of such activities would have a grain of policy implication, where instead of spending huge resources in the little rewarding SWC schemes through obligatory campaigns and food-for-work (f-f-w) programs, and instead of collecting land taxes on sheer land size parameter, it could be possible to encourage conservation-minded peasants through systematically targeted tax incentives, while discouraging those who are either cultivating fragile lands or mining the good ones with out adopting the recommended land management.