In recent years the Ethiopian government has introduced several policy initiatives aimed at environmental rehabilitation, natural resource management, and conservation measures (Keeley & Scoones, 2000). Nyssen et al. (2004) claim that these policies have achieved some success by helping to restore the degraded environment and enhancing agricultural productivity. However, looking at the history of the last several decades, Bassi (2002) argues that the country’s capacity to cope with environmental fl uctuations has been steadily decreasing and the relationship between human communities and their living environment is now characterized by a “crisis in livelihood.” Despite formal claims that particular policies are succeeding, what has not changed is that Ethiopia’s poor farmers are highly dependent on natural resources for subsistence (Abegaz, 2004, p. 314). Although leaders in some developing countries have demonstrated a capacity to attend simultaneously to development concerns and environmental priorities (Steinberg, 2001), circumstances that contributed to success elsewhere have not yet obtained in Ethiopia.