Together, the School has helped create seven new cooperatives which trade mainly in forest coffee and honey which are exported to a variety of European buyers. In addition, 12 new micro-enterprises have been supported to provide new trading opportunities in other forest products and to enhance the position of women in the local society. This forest protection work along with the Ethiopian partner has brought 450,000 hectares of tropical montane rainforest under community management and has reduced the rate of forest lost to less than one tenth of what it was before. This has resulted in major carbon savings, estimated to be 2.7 million tons of carbon dioxide a year which is equivalent to the annual emissions of 280,000 people in the UK. There have been three Research Excellence Framework (REF) impact cases studies produced from the work in Ethiopia, one in 2014 and a further two in 2021, as well as five journal articles published since 2018.

Source: Ethiopian News July 07, 2021 07:07 UTC