Preface This study focuses on Ethiopia's attempt at introducing soil conservation and afforestation innovations aimed at reversing the process of degradation of its agricultural resource-base. It considers the tenure ambiguity, uncertainty, and insecurity stemming from the state ownership of land under which these innovations were attempted. It tells the story of how rural people responded to the project-induced adoption of measures to protect the land even though their holdings remained under a constant threat of reallocation. This story concerns issues arising from over-population, revolution, agrarian reform, population relocation, land reallocations, internationally financed projects, and not least, civil war. Questions of soil conservation and afforestation, and land tenure are issues of fundamental importance to the millions of rural families in Ethiopia. In fact, in the long-run, they may be more may be as important to the people of several Sahelian and Sub-Saharan...
