Conflict-related environmental degradation threatens the success of landscape recovery in some areas in Tigray (Ethiopia)

Armed conflicts can lead to environmental degradation, thereby threatening the basis of people’s livelihoods and well-being. Identifying areas where conflicts drive environmental degradation is important for designing effective recovery strategies, but this is inherently challenging in insecure contexts. We use a case study in Tigray, Ethiopia to illustrate how open-source satellite data can be used to support the identification of woody vegetation loss during armed conflicts in situations where ground-based assessments are difficult or impossible. Areas of potential woody vegetation loss extend across 930 km² (approximately 4% of the area occupied by forest and other woody vegetation in Tigray) and appear to be concentrated mostly along major roads; however, vegetation recovery has continued during the war across a significantly larger area (approximately 2600 km²). Spatial patterns of woody vegetation loss appear to be unrelated to drought conditions and large-scale wildfires. Based on these observations and anecdotal evidence of deforestation, we propose that it may be conflict-driven deforestation, caused by increases in fuel wood demands, that are driving the woody vegetation losses in some areas of Tigray. Eventual recovery efforts will have to consider the loss in landscape health during the war in areas where woody vegetation has declined, and include efforts to restore this vegetation to ensure both food security and livelihoods. Open access satellite data, together with ground-based data collection, could inform such post-war restoration efforts by helping identify degraded areas at a regional scale.

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