Throughout sub-Saharan Africa wetlands provide ecosystem services that are critical to the development needs of many people. Local wetland use, however, is often at odds with broader national policy goals in which narratives of conservation and protection dominate, hence a recurring challenge is how to reconcile these tensions through the development of policies and field practice that deliver sustainable development. In this paper we examine the extent to which this challenge has been achieved in Ethiopia, charting the changes in wetlands policy and discourse over the last twenty years while reviewing the contribution of the multidisciplinary Ethiopian Wetlands Research Programme (EWRP) (1997–2000). Our analysis suggests that despite EWRP having a significant legacy in developing national interest in wetlands among research, government and non-governmental organisations, its more holistic social-ecological interpretation of wetland management remains neglected within a policy arena dominated by specific sectoral interests and little recognition of the needs of local people. In exploring the impacts at the local level, recent investigations with communities in Ilu Aba Bora Zone highlight adjustments in wetland use that famers attribute to environmental, economic and social change, but which also evidence the adaptive nature of wetland-based livelihoods.

在整个撒哈拉以南非洲地区，湿地提供的生态系统服务对于许多人的发展需求至关重要。但是，当地对湿地的利用常常与以保护和保护为主的更广泛的国家政策目标相矛盾，因此，经常出现的挑战是如何通过制定政策和实地实践来调和这些紧张关系，以实现可持续发展。在本文中，我们研究了埃塞俄比亚在多大程度上克服了这一挑战，绘制了过去二十年来湿地政策和话语权的变化，同时回顾了多学科埃塞俄比亚湿地研究计划（EWRP）（1997-2000）的贡献。我们的分析表明，尽管EWRP在发展国家对湿地的研究兴趣方面具有重大遗产，政府和非政府组织，其对湿地管理的更全面的社会生态学解释在以特定部门利益为主导且对当地人民的需求知之甚少的政策领域仍然被忽视。在探索对地方的影响时，最近对伊卢阿巴波拉地区社区的调查强调，湿地使用的调整是环境，经济和社会变化的成因，但也证明了湿地生计的适应性。