A consultative meeting was facilitated by Ministry of Agriculture and Natural resources of Ethiopia with Bahir Dar University on 06 February 2017. There were 10 number of participants from Ministry of Agriculture and Natural resources, 1 participant from Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Energy, 1 participant from International Water Management Institute, 2 participant from Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change and 5 from Bahir Dar University. The presentation during the meeting includes
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Project overview (PEER Science project: Reducing soil loss through effective soil and water conservation practices using hydrologic considerations and farmers’ participation in Blue Nile Basin) by project PI: Dr. Seifu A Tilahun
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Managing gully head retreat: a means to reduce soil loss from gullies by PhD Student: Meseret Belachew
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Upscaling gully head treatments as part of conservation campaign in 4 districts by Amhara RS Bureau of Agriculture expert: Gedefaw Beyene
At the end of each of the presentations, extensive discussions were held with the participants and ways forward were suggested. Some of the suggestions include;
- To strengthen the research output, the Ministry of Water, Energy, and Electricity would like to cooperate with universities such as Bahir Dar University by bringing technologies such as geotextiles to test its effectiveness for gully bank and bed erosion control.
- The SLM project representatives expressed their willingness to fund proposals to work on cutting edge soil erosion researches ideas.
- The ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resource Management pointed out the inclusion of the research findings into their strategic plan. At this time regional states are preparing the national strategic plan for the coming 15 years, so that it is a good opportunity to include the universities effort into the respective regional strategic plan. In addition, they promised to focus on gully treatment techniques that is presented here to disseminate by trainings prepared at national level. They further suggested to include maintenance as part of their GTP-2 plan with the implementation of new soil and water conservation structures.
