Socio-economic values, threats and legal protection aspects of wetland ecosystem in Afar region, Ethiopia

  Elias Jigar,  Shibabaw Gebru ,  Amare Ayalew

A large Proportion of household (96%) were found to be dependent on Meteke Wetland. 90% respondents replied that their family members go to the wetlands every day for various reasons. Selling mattress and reed took the loin share sources of livelihood which was followed by collection of wood for household energy, house constriction and furniture making. Majority (45%) of the households had incomes within the range Birr 1001 to birr 1500, followed by(20%) birr 501 to birr 1000. About 92% of households had no educational background. The amounts of waste being dumped directly into the wetland by Car washing and urban settlement were increasing. Expansion of urbanization were growing towards the wetland areas.76 % of the households stated that the wetlands were shrinking in size.8 % of the households stated that the wetlands were expanding while 6 % of the households evaluated the wetlands as being not detect any change and 10% of the households evaluated the wetlands as fluctuating. The possible causes for shrinking the wetland provided by 80% of the respondents were the decrease in vegetation cover, expansion of urbanization in the areas, the increase use of water while another 20 % did not know the reason behind the shrinking. With respect to vegetation cover over time on the wetlands concerned, the survey indicated that the majority of households (77 %) said that the vegetation cover on the wetlands were decreasing while 9 % of the households felt that the vegetation cover was increasing but still another 14% would not detect any change on the wetlands. Large proportion of respondents replied that over-exploitation(70%) of the wetland resources, Lack of Awareness, Information and Research Work on Wetlands(60%), Lack of appropriate government policy implementation in wetlands(35%) were onsite, offsite and underlying causes contributing to the wetland degradation and loss respectively. During this study, it was also understood that there were no any local mechanisms in place to conserve the wetland.

Keywords- Wetland, Values, Threats, Conservation

Unique Identification Number - IJEDR1602039
Page Number(s) - 221-229
Pubished in - Volume 4 | Issue 2 | April 2016
DOI (Digital Object Identifier) -   
Publisher - IJEDR (ISSN - 2321-9939)

  Elias Jigar,  Shibabaw Gebru ,  Amare Ayalew,   "Socio-economic values, threats and legal protection aspects of wetland ecosystem in Afar region, Ethiopia", International Journal of Engineering Development and Research (IJEDR), ISSN:2321-9939, Volume.4, Issue 2, pp.221-229, April 2016, Available at :http://www.ijedr.org/papers/IJEDR1602039.pdf