SOCIETY AND ENVIRONMENT IN MÄTÄKÄL, NORTHWESTERN ETHIOPIA

1880s to 1990s

This book deals with an environmental history of Mätäkäl, a region located along Ethiopia’s northwest, from the late 1880s to the early 1990s.

The late 1880s forms an important watershed in the environmental history of Mätäkäl since it witnessed a major transformation in the demographic structure and environmental features of the region due to the conjuncture of a major cattle epizootic, locust invasion and failure of the rains.

These ecological shocks were played out against the backdrop of major political disturbances and local and regional and cross-border warfare that deepened the vulnerability of the population to these disasters.

The early 1990s, on the other hand, marked the end of a decade of intensive projects of social and ecological engineering initiated by the Derg socialist government that primariy consisted of the resettlement of tens of thousands of agrarian populations from the southern and northern highlands in the lowlands of Mätäkäl as well as its large-scale socialist agrarian projects that depended on the operation of large state farms.