Water and soils become increasingly a limiting resource for meeting the food requirements of a growing world population. Especially in developing countries of the tropics climate variability in conjunction with often low productivity in mainly subsistence agriculture pose a threat to vulnerable rural societies; access to infrastructure and affordable natural resources is becoming even more difficult day by day. However, integrated concepts for managing natural resources in a sustainable and environmentally sound manner (Integrated Watershed Management - IWM '' or Sustainable Land Use Management - SLM) show encouraging impacts, if applied on large scale and over a long period like in Tigray, the Northern most regional state of Ethiopia.

  
Professor Gerd Förch
Managing Director- ZEW/CICD Centre for International Capacity Development
University of Siegen
Siegen, Germany
gerd.foerch@uni-siegen.de