Ethiopia has been pursuing a manufacturing-led development strategy since the early 2000s, achieving substantial growth and poverty reduction for over a decade. However, little attention has been paid to whether these results were achieved at the expense of environmental sustainability.
Relying on the review of promulgated environmental policies and on 22 in depth interviews with public and private stakeholders, this study aims to assess whether the existing command and-control approach to environmental management is delivering on its promises, and whether there is scope for a wider deployment of environmental taxes. Our analysis demonstrates that, despite the implementation of a variety of policies since the late 1990s, environmental management in Ethiopia is substantially ineffective. This is due to a combination of institutional instability and a lack of technical and human resources in the main agency tasked to protect the environment, and to the low political priority of environmental protection, seen as an unaffordable luxury when pursuing rapid economic growth. In this context, whether a switch to a market-based approach to environmental management would improve the situation seems doubtful, as any new instrument would be ineffective as long as there is a lack of political will to enforce environmental protection by capacitating the agencies mandated to this task.
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