Environmental and social integration in Tigray’s postwar reconstruction

Tigray, a small region in northern Ethiopia, has faced serious problems over the last three years. The COVID-19 pandemic-related lockdowns come first, followed by history's longest and most destructive war and siege. The brutal war wiped out millions of people and destroyed Tigray’s infrastructure. The Pretoria agreement makes it seem necessary to reconstruct the damaged region. To this effect, proactive strategies are required to integrate environmental and social factors into development projects. Hence, this paper synthesizes the extent of environmental and social integration practices in development initiatives of the pre-war period in Tigray to draw lessons for postwar reconstruction. In this research, the environmental impact assessments of twenty-one multi-sector development projects as well as 2327 project proposals processed for environmental clearance in Tigray were used to analyze legislative promises and performances. According to this study, private and public sector development initiatives had weak commitments compared to projects with external pressure from development aid organizations. This can be attributed to a dearth of regulatory agency expertise, a lackluster legislative foundation, and questionable institutional autonomy. Moreover, the absence of a context-based land use plan, a lack of cluster-based integrated watershed management, and a failure to consider eco-services and cumulative impacts during project appraisal are some of the gaps identified. Therefore, these confronting realities need a proactive solution before any reconstruction efforts are planned in the region.