Telling the ECSA Story

Participants now have stable running water they are using to irrigate their gardens. © Titukulane RFSA 2023/Samuel Chibaya Although Cyclone Freddy severely battered much of Zomba, lives and property were saved, thanks to the adoption of watershed protection practices. Led by Lifa Village Natural Resource Management Committee (VNMRC), over 3,000 households protected their watershed with water and soil conservation structures such as swales, check dams, eyebrows, deep trenches, and stone bunds before the devastating rainy season. Evelyn Mwada, secretary for Lifa Watershed in Zomba, recounted the effectiveness of the protection measures: "When the stormy winds and torrential rains came, many of the structures stood strong. Out of 3,000 check dams, only 168 were damaged; out of 1,050 swales, 700 were damaged; out of 500 cubic meters of stone bunds, 100 were damaged, and there was no damage on the 1,000 cubic meters of deep trenches. Titukulane has trained us on how to protect our area...

  Natural Resource Management (NRM)  clearing weeds on a field enclosed for future grazing. CARE/David Mutua On the border between Kenya and Ethiopia, in Eymolo location, Banisa sub-county of Mandera, Aden Ibrahim and members of the Natural Resource Management (NRM) - group he chairs - go about clearing weeds on one of the group’s two enclosures. As a predominantly pastoralist society, the community in Banisa heavily relies on available pasture for the survival of their livestock. “Management of land and pasture through the establishment of such enclosures is key. We live in a semi-arid region, and we experience frequent droughts and little rainfall, and this causes animals to die due to lack of pasture,” Aden says. Camels searching for food in Eymolo, Banisa sub-county of Mandera County. CARE/David Mutua Rangeland management is critical in ensuring that pasture in the pasture lands are not degraded due to overgrazing. It is the practice of preserving sections of pasture to ...