Cultural and Historical Geography, Anthropogenic Change in the Ethiopian Highlands - Research Paper Example

The northwest portion that covers the Amhara and Tigray Regions, encompass the Semien-Mountains, in which a part of it is a national-park. Lake Tana, where Blue Nile springs from, also lies within the northwest part of the Ethiopian-Highlands. The Bale Mountains are situated in the Southeast of the Ethiopian Highlands, also allocated a national-park (Alemneh 6). This paper will discuss the anthropogenic change in the Ethiopian Highlands. Indigenous People Ethnically the south-western highlands, particularly in Kefa as well as to the southern Gemu Gofa, form a shatter-belt of varied ethnic factions.

They encompass Omotic populaces who carry out hoe cultivation plus the plough cultivators-Oromos who inhabited the region in the 17th era (Blaikie 57). The dichotomized lowlands and valleys are occupied by a range of Sudanic and Omotic hunter gatherers, agro-pastoralists and cultivators (Alemneh 6). On top of the ethnic factions whose home lands are within this expanse, in-migration in the last 100 years has introduced numerous small groups, largely Amharas and Gurages from northern and eastern part of southwestern highlands.

Majority of this in-relocation has been linked tocoffee development and land alienation (Hutchinson 34). Conflict The ethnic multiplicity of the Ethiopian Highlands creates a possibility potential for conflict since these factions have diverse interests of the resource-base, hold diverse expertise through which to employ them, and claim privileges over diverse areas and resources (Sutcliffe 44). The factions that have interests concerning the south-west resources include the local-communities and native ethnic groups, the central government and non-local ethnic factions who have relocated into this area, the novel regional administrations of Kefa and Oromia, communities from outside the area who rely on a number of the expanse's resources like irrigation water (Hutchinson 45) and (Alemneh 6).

Natural Resource Use/History The Ethiopian-Highlands started to emerge 75m ages ago, as molten rock from the Globe's mantle elevated a broad roof of the African Craton ancient rocks. The Great Rift Valley opening split the roof of the Ethiopian-Highlands into 3 parts; the southern Arabian-Peninsula Mountains are geographically part of the primeval Ethiopian-Highlands, divided by the rifting that created the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea, and detached Arabia from Africa(see figure 2) (Blaikie 57) and (Alemneh 6).

Ethiopian highlands are very rich with respect to natural reserves. The region can be viewed as among the last reserve frontiers within the country that is being utilized with boosted intensity whilst the population swells and deforestation ensues (Blaikie 57). The sources to this reserve prosperity are the great and consistent rainfall plus the forest-cover. The cover from the forest, by shielding the loams from wearing away, has assisted the red-clay soils of this region develop to above 2 meters in profundity.

The rainfall and soil resources afford the southwestern highlands an extremely considerable agricultural prospective for an extensive variety of crops, together with coffee, whereas the dependability of crop produces is great unlike in several other regions of Ethiopia (Gedion 95) and (Alemneh 6). Owing to the environmental settings, the southern-west highlands possess a strong relative advantage in production of timber. They contain roughly half of Ethiopian’s remaining high forestry that produces quality wood for furniture (Blaikie 57).

The consumption of