Ethiopia is one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. One of the endemic species important to the country is Coffea arabica, which in mountain regions grows in the wild. Wild coffee is not only consumed locally and worldwide. It also serves as key breeding stock for new coffee varieties. As forest now covers only three percent of the Ethiopian land surface, the country’s wild coffee populations are severely endangered.

As a contribution towards conserving the forests and their biodiversity, a research project was carried out from 2003 to 2009 by the University of Bonn and a number of partners, with funding from the German Ministry of Education and Research. The project aimed to study the remaining locations where wild coffee grows in south-western Ethiopia and develop ideas for their conservation and sustainable use. The German Environment Ministry and BfN supported implementation of the research findings from 2006.

It also became clear that there was a need to raise public awareness of the importance of conserving wild coffee as a national resource. To help build this awareness, BfN supported a schools competition in 2007. Schoolchildren from wild coffee regions wrote songs and poems and painted pictures highlighting the importance of wild coffee and the need to protect forests for the local population. The competition also brought to light local knowledge on sustainable management strategies previously unknown to the researchers. The songs and poems were publicised in the radio, television and print media, raising awareness of wild coffee and its habitats nationwide.

ECFF, BfN and their partner organisations held an event for high-ranking guests in Addis Ababa in 2009 to draw attention to the potential of biosphere reserves and the activities already completed and to obtain the support of political decision makers. Not only the Minister of Science and Technology, the minister responsible, but also the President of Ethiopia spoke out in favour of supporting a nomination process for biosphere reserves to conserve the coffee forests. It is partly as a result of this event that biosphere reserves are regarded in Ethiopia as a useful way of aligning environmental, social and economic interests around sustainable development objectives.

The event also provided an opportunity to discuss key details with representatives of existing African biosphere reserves, for example regarding the necessary legal framework or establishing an efficient administration in a developing country context. After the event, it was possible to present the landscape planning approach to a broader range of potential users at a workshop as a further contribution towards capacity building for sustainable development.