Socio-cultural Considerations in Environmental Policy Formulation and Implementation in Ethiopia

The idea of policies for holistic social development, healthy communities, and resilient socio-cultural institutions is one of the core issues of literature on sustainable society, development and environment. The nexus between national economic policies, resilient communities, and development is best understood in the context of policies for social development, particularly in terms of building resilient socio-cultural institutions, protecting communities, and ensuring useful traditional knowledge systems. Some research on environment and society in Ethiopia generally focus on policy failures and institutional dysfunctions leading to natural resource degradation and environmental exploitation. Others address increasingly insecure livelihood and political instability as a manifestation of unsuitable society, environment, and development. Further, policy instruments pertaining to environment, and the impact assessments are often analyzed in light of the legal perspective. This study aimed at understanding how existing environmental policy instruments define and represent socio-cultural matters as part of the environment policy and impact assessment frameworks of the country. The study adopted a qualitative method approach through analyzing existing policy documents and interviewing relevant actors. The study found out that while existing instruments do indeed address socio-cultural issues, the main problem lies in adequacy of representation of socio-cultural issues, particularly cultural resources (notably heritages, identities, belief systems social institutions, etc.). More so, the problem lies in the disturbing state of realizing the policy provisions for socio-cultural issues. Policy formulators and implementers’ general level of socio-culturally sensitive awareness, attitude and commitment is a key gap.