Background and Justification

Ethiopia owns diverse vegetation resources that include high forests, woodlands, bush lands, plantations, and trees outside forests. Each of these vegetation resources variously contributes to the production, protection and conservation functions, and play significant role in the national and local economy. There are six key economic roles that forest resources play in Ethiopia: (i) foreign currency earnings, mainly from export of non-wood forest products; (ii) import substitution for energy; (iii) contribution to the GDP; (iv)employment generation; v) livelihood support for millions of citizens, and vi) provision of environmental services that support other sectors, particularly agriculture, construction and energy. At local level forests and trees provide food, medicine, energy, fodder, farm implement and construction materials. Upon conversion forestlands have been offering fertile croplands to sustain crop production. When protected forests are used as rangelands, act as biological measures to conserve soil and water and provide watershed protection.

Despite their wide reaching significance, forest resources of the country have been declining both in size (deforestation) and quality (degradation). Overwhelmingly, the human factor is responsible for forest degradation in the country. Population growth, poverty, unstable land- tenure system, property right over forests, lack of forest and land-use policies and socio-political instability are among the major driving factors often listed.

The idea of this modularized Curriculum is incited following the identification of the ever- increasing problems related to the unsustainable utilization of the country’s forest resources. Strong stewardship of forests and related resources supported by trained manpower and appropriate forest policy are vitally important to address the objectives of sustainable forest development and utilization.

Therefore, this modularized Curriculum is destined to offer a BSc degree in Forestry in order to have professional foresters who significantly contribute to sustainable management, utilization and conservation of forests and forest-related resources for the attainment of food security and poverty alleviation as well as livelihood improvement of the rural population.

MODULARIZED CURRICULUM FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF SCIENCE (BSc.) IN FORESTRY