Center for Development and Capacity Building concludes Lake Danbal Rehabilitation Project (Baraara Hara Danbal) after four years of implementation activities conducted in two phases of two years each. The closeout of the project was announced by the project implementation focal person, Mr. Gedeon Megersa, today at half a day gathering of stakeholders held at Elilly Hotel.
At the outset of the gathering, Mr. Amanuel Adnew, Executive Director of the CDCB, welcomed participants to the gathering and explained the background of the lake rehabilitation project. He said that the volume of lake had been declining implying it was drying due to its being highly used for development schemes and it was prone to contamination. On top of that he added that the surrounding hills and feeder river courses were rendered barren due to over exploitation and lack of rehabilitation and wise use of the resources. He further explained that a local association was strengthened to obtain legal entity to mobilize local community in the rehabilitation activities that covered nursery development guided by agriculture experts in the selection of the seedlings to fit to the local environment.
Following the welcoming speech, Mr. Dejene Birru, National Coordinator of the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) spoke of the overall performance of the project under small grant offered by SGP and GEF. The Director said a platform was established involving local community, government sectors and other stakeholders including investors who owned different factories. With this initiative, startup activities were accomplished and the project came to a closeout mainly implementing activities of the last two years after the first two years were interrupted due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Mr. Dejene Birru underscored that an association was set up to benefit the local community from the interventions in a joint involvement of the local government to guarantee the sustainability of the project outcomes.
Participants of the gathering held intense discussion after the official opening and brief presentation of project implementation process. Sustainability issue was the major point of discussion to aware the public benefit from planting tree seedling that could take long period before yielding output. Thus raising awareness of the community to work towards the common benefit of environmental rehabilitation was considered crucial during the discussion.