WHOSE DECISIONS, WHOSE LIVELIHOODS?

RESETTLEMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN ETHIOPIA

Gutu Olana Wayessa¹ &

Anja Nygren²

¹ Corresponding author: Dr. Gutu Wayessa, University of Luxembourg, Research Unit

IPSE (Identités, Politiques, Sociétés, Espaces), Route de Diekirch, L-7220 Campus

Walferdange, Luxembourg, email: gutu.wayessa@uni.lu

² Dr. Anja Nygren, Box 18, Development Studies, Department of Political and Economic

Studies, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland, email: anja.nygren@helsinki.fi

Acknowledgements:

This article draws on research funded by the Academy of Finland. We thank the Nordic

Africa Institute (NAI) for covering part of the fieldwork expenses. We are grateful to people

and governmental and non-governmental institutes in Ethiopia that co-operated with our

research, especially our respondents, informants, and research assistants during the fieldwork.

We thank Axel Borchgrevink, Ian Scoones, Christina Linsenmeyer, Kimmo Vehkalahti, and

the three anonymous reviewers of the journal of Society and Natural Resources for their

valuable and highly constructive comments. Mekonnen Bekele and Anna Maarit Eskola

assisted in producing the map.

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Abstract

This article analyzes recent state-implemented resettlement schemes in Oromia, Ethiopia, by

examining the experiences and outcomes of resettlement from the perspective of both the

resettlers and hosts. Besides involving transformations in people’s access to resources and the

ability to earn their livelihoods, resettlement invites deep-seated questions of governance and

justice. Drawing on theoretical approaches of political ecology and environmental justice, we

analyze the processes and outcomes of resettlement in terms of four interlinked dimensions,

including resource (re)distribution, cultural recognition, political representation, and social

recovery. Special attention is paid to the questions of who decides for whom, and who lives

the consequences. The analysis is based on a mixed-methods approach, involving a

combination of qualitative interviews and a quantitative survey. We conclude that both the

resettlers and the hosts experienced uneven redistribution of resources and unfair forms of

recognition and political representation, which in tandem limited their possibilities for social

recovery.

Keywords: displacement, environmental justice, Ethiopia, livelihoods, mixed methods,

political ecology, resettlement

Introduction

Resettlement is a worldwide phenomenon undertaken for different reasons. Often, it is

conducted as compensation for people who lost their lands due to construction of dams,

agricultural or natural-resource extraction investments, establishment of protected areas or

industrial zones (Zoomers 2011). Other causes of displacement include natural disasters,

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violent conflicts, and environmental degradation. Transnational investments and the recent

“rush for land” in the form of large-scale land transfers are increasing the likelihood of further

displacement (Borras et al. 2011). As there are differences in the causes of displacement, there

are variations in the post-displacement plights and livelihood-reconstruction needs. Therefore,

detailed analyses of resettlement processes in different contexts are crucial.

The associated environmental, socio-cultural, and political-economic changes make

resettlement an issue of remarkable scientific and societal relevance. Despite many studies on

resettlement, there is limited knowledge on its socio-cultural and political-economic

implications (Price 2009). Drawing on theoretical approaches of political ecology and

environmental justice, we seek to contribute to these research fields by addressing

resettlement as a process of (re)distribution, recognition, representation, and recovery (Fraser

2009, Schlosberg and Carruthers 2010).

This study’s empirical case comes from Ethiopia, where government-planned

resettlement programs have been implemented for several decades. Since the mid-1980s, the

Derg regime (1974-1991) relocated hundreds of thousands of people from the north to the

western and southwestern parts of the country. During the current government of the

Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (1991-present), resettlements of greater

magnitude have been implemented within the regional states (Hammond 2008, Removed by

SNR). This study focuses on resettlement schemes within Oromia National Regional State

(ONRS), mainly from the eastern to the western part of Oromia, since 2003. 1 Most resettlers

travelled over one thousand kilometers to reach their relocation sites.

According to the Ethiopian government, resettlement was adopted as a strategy to tackle

recurrent food insecurity and improve resettlers’ livelihoods. Therefore, it is important to

evaluate the resettlement’s impacts on resettlers’ well-being. Besides, the effects of

resettlement on the livelihoods and well-being of the hosts – referring to people living in the

1 Ethiopia consists of nine regional states and two city administrative councils.

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areas where resettlers were moved – need careful consideration. Few resettlement studies

have addressed the hosts’ resettlement experiences and outcomes; moreover, policy-makers

have paid little attention to the plights of the host population. The following analysis

examines the experiences of resettlement among both population groups.

In the next section, we present theoretical approaches relevant to the political-ecological

and environmental-justice dimensions of resettlement, while the third section explains the

socio-political context and the methods used in this study. The fourth section analyzes the

redistribution of resources, and the fifth section examines resettlement-related issues of

recognition, representation, and recovery. The final section presents the conclusions.

The political ecology and environmental justice of resettlement

A comprehensive understanding of people’s resettlement experiences entails addressing the

displacement side of the issue. The conventional view of displacement – as a physical removal

of people from a certain bio-physical territory – is challenged by researchers who advocate a

broader conceptualization of displacement, including the political-economic and socio-cultural

processes involved (Cernea 2005, Cernea and Schmidt-Soltau 2006, Escobar 2008, Oliver-

Smith 2006). Displacement also involves cases where, even without physical removal, people’s

access to resources or practices to engage with the environment have become so altered that we

can speak of structural displacement (Oliver-Smith 2006, p. 155). Given that place continues to

be a crucial issue in people’s identities and livelihoods (Escobar 2008), and the restriction of

access to resources often means deprivation of place-based livelihoods, there is a need to

analyze displacement through the transformations in people’s living space and resource access.

If “violence sits in places” (Springer 2011, p. 91), so does injustice.

This view of displacement and resettlement invites analytical approaches in which

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environmental and socio-political issues are conceptualized as tightly intertwined (Nygren

and Rikoon 2008). Political ecology, as a theoretical approach, seeks an “understanding of

how environmental and political forces interact to mediate environmental and social change”

(Bryant 1992, p. 12), with a focus on the “interface between political forces and

environmental changes” (Scoones 2009, p. 174). Displacement and resettlement are

inherently environmental and socio-political because they involve people’s removal from one

bio-physical and socio-political space to another, and transform access to resources and social

relationships.

Political-ecological approaches, in which access to resources is considered not only an issue

of access right, but also a question of access ability (Ribot and Peluso 2003, Sikor and Lund

2009) are highly relevant in this context. Ethiopian resettlement programs have close links to the

country’s land-tenure policies, according to which the land belongs to the state and smallholders’

representation in resource governance is limited (Chinigò 2015). Under existing land

governance, the resettlers have few possibilities to resist their removal. Likewise, the hosts have

little power to exclude others from settling on “their” lands. Although people in Ethiopia have

the constitutional right not to be alienated from their customary lands, the government can, at

any time, claim an area for another use and evict people from their homelands.

The conceptualization of a “will to improve,” involving “programs to move populations

from one place to another, to better provide for their needs” (Li 2007, p. 2) is a useful approach

herein. This Foucauldian-oriented, political-ecological perspective focuses on the gaps between

attempts and accomplishments in development interventions. In Ethiopia, resettlement has

enabled the government to impose its will on people, and to subject people to its will. Through

massive resettlement schemes, the state has buttressed its “power to shape environments for

human action and interaction” (Paulson et al. 2005, p. 28). This includes “technologies of

invisibility” Hammond (2008, p. 519), which the state uses to formulate people’s ways of

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thinking about themselves and their relationships with each other. Through tight control over

material resources and cultural representations, the state seeks to render certain territories and

resource-users governable and subject to increased surveillance.

Considering the state as a monolith and local people as homogeneous group of actors with

unified resource interests is an oversimplification especially within the context of resettlement,

wherein the experiences of different “target groups” differ from each other (Agrawal 2005, Peet

et al. 2011). In recent years, several researchers have combined political-ecological approach of

resource governance with environmental-justice approach to understand different actors’

concerns and claims over resource rights, livelihood security, and environmental vulnerability

(Banerjee 2014, Carruthers 2008, Nygren 2014). Together with political ecology, the

environmental-justice approach enables to capture cultural perceptions and social experiences

involved in resettlement processes.

Traditionally, most of the environmental-justice studies have concentrated on resource

distribution. Influenced by the ideas of Rawls (1971), the main focus has been on the

questions of who benefits from natural resources and who bears the costs. Recently, the

distributional aspect of environmental justice has been expanded to better capture not only the

inequalities in the spatial distribution of resources, but also in the social stratification of

everyday well-being (Walker 2009). Furthermore, perspectives on justice should address the

processes that produce and legitimize practices of misdistribution, including cultural

recognition (Fraser and Honneth 2003). Here, a central question is not only the psychological

component of misrecognition, but also the structural asymmetries and the social position of

those involved in the distributional schemes (Fraser 2009). At the core of misrecognition are

institutional processes that devalue some people and places in comparison to others.

Many theorists also highlight aspects of political representation or participation as

crucial components of environmental justice. Although closely interlinked terms, political

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representation is a wider concept than participation, including people’s opportunity to

influence decision-making related to environmental rights and social distribution of resources

(Fraser 2009, Schlosberg 2007). Recently, representation has been extended to encompass

multifaceted interactions between actors across diverse sectors and on multiple scales. The

transparency of such interaction is a crucial test of procedural justice (Walker 2009).

These matters of interaction have close links to the capability approach, which aims to

capture issues of communal welfare and social recovery related to justice, by considering

people’s differentiated opportunities to take command of their lives and social well-being

(Scholsberg and Carruthers 2010, Sen 2010). Collective experiences of (in)justice are crucial,

especially in many Southern communities, where the central question is not necessarily the

individual satisfaction, but the community’s capability to renew itself and act collectively. In

these contexts, well-being means not only “living well”, but also “living well together”

(Deneulin and McGregor 2010, p. 501). Social structures and institutional power relations

have a crucial effect on people’s capabilities to pursue freedom in relation to others.

In this study, we conceptualize resettlement as a process, where justice is as much

where one begins as where one ends. Inspired by the works of Fraser (2009), and Schlosberg

and Carruthers (2010), we frame our analysis of the political ecology and environmental

justice of resettlement through four interlinked dimensions, namely resource (re)distribution,

cultural recognition, political representation, and social recovery. Justice as distribution pays

attention to the socio-spatial redistribution of resources, while justice as recognition considers

how people’s cultural identity and social status are evaluated in comparison with others.

Justice as representation looks at inclusions, exclusions, and uneven incorporations in

environmental decision-making, while justice as recovery considers people’s collective

capabilities to renew themselves and reconstruct their livelihoods after a disaster or, in this

case, after forced displacement. When analyzing who decides on whose livelihoods and how

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during the resettlement in Oromia, we conceptualize these dimensions as tightly interwoven.

Recently, considerable research has been undertaken on the multifaceted strategies

employed by highly-visible, well-organized environmental-justice movements (Banerjee

2014, Carruthers 2008). Simultaneously, relatively scant attention has been paid to cases

where no justice movements exist. Besides showing the linkages between the different

dimensions of environmental justice, our study contributes to existing research on political

ecology and justice by examining the struggles over resource governance and justice in places

where resistance remains largely invisible. Our study focuses on Oromia as a “silent site of

injustices,” where organized protests are rapidly suppressed and people are obliged to seek

environmental justice and human dignity through everyday forms of recuperation and

invisible tactics of resistance.

Context and methods

This study is based on intensive field research carried out in Oromia from February through

August 2009, and a follow-up through media and other secondary sources thereafter. Western

Oromia was chosen because previous and current governments implemented massive

resettlement schemes in this region. Empirical data were collected from thirteen resettlement

sites (Figure 1), through a quantitative household survey in eight sites and qualitative

interviews, group discussions, and participant observation in thirteen sites. We conducted a

pretest of questionnaire in five sites that were then excluded from the household survey.

Qualitative interviews and participant observation were conducted in all the thirteen sites

before and during the survey. Resettlement policy documents, feasibility studies, and

implementation reports were subjected to a qualitative content analysis.

For the site-selection, a list of resettlement sites was obtained from the Oromia Food

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Security Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission (OFSDPPC), the institute

responsible for resettlement coordination in Oromia. According to OFSDPPC, 38 resettlement

sites were established in western Oromia in 2003-2005. Of these sites, we purposively

selected eight sites for the household survey. In site selection, we sought to include prevailing

variation in people’s livelihood status and the outcomes of the resettlement program. The

households at the resettlement sites were classified as “resettlers” or “hosts”.2 From each

stratum, households were selected randomly, which constituted a stratified random sampling

for the quantitative component. Participants for qualitative interviews were selected

considering the variation in resettlement experiences according to age, gender, social identity,

and political power. The combination of a household survey and qualitative interviews

offered good opportunities for exploring the multi-dimensionality of the resettlement. In total,

630 households (387 resettlers and 243 hosts) were surveyed, and 68 qualitative interviews

were conducted.

The issues addressed in the questionnaires and interviews included the government’s

promises, decision-making concerning relocation, land ownership, livelihood strategies, host-

resettler relations, and people’s resettlement expectations and experiences. As opposed to the

previous governments’ resettlement programs, which were interregional and thus included

people’s movement across ethnic boundaries, the current regime’s resettlement programs are

intraregional, with restrictions to move across ethnic boundaries. As the resettlements we

studied were limited within the Oromia Regional State, all the resettlers were Oromo. There

was, however, slight ethnic diversity among the hosts, where the Amhara constituted 7.4% of

the sample. This was attributable to self-initiated migration by the Amhara to Oromia, and to

the state-sponsored resettlement implemented by the previous government.

Both resettlers and hosts depended on crop production and livestock husbandry for their

livelihoods. The main crops were sorghum and corn. Many households also cultivated millet, 2 In Chawaqa, there were no inhabitants (hosts) prior to resettlers’ arrival.

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barley, wheat, teff, haricot beans, chickpeas, beans, peas, and potatoes. The most common

livestock were cattle, goat, and sheep. 98% of resettlers and 92% of the hosts ranked farming

as their primary livelihood source.

In recent years, many researchers have emphasized the need for mixed-methods

approaches, in which qualitative and quantitative methods are integrated in data gathering and

analysis (Bryman 2007, Kanbur and Shaffer 2007, Sweetman et al. 2010). In the fields of

political ecology and environmental justice, most studies have been primarily qualitative,

while quantitative analysis has been used only as a secondary approach. As Mohai et al.

(2009, p. 407) note, this might be because quantitative measurement of injustice is not an easy

task, especially in politically-volatile Southern contexts. By employing mixed methods, we

sought to improve our quantitative estimates and qualitative interpretations of the resettlement

processes and outcomes. In the following, we quantitatively assess the changes in the

resettlers’ and hosts’ access to resources and identify the similarities and differences in their

livelihood outcomes, while qualitatively analyzing how these changes came about and how

people perceived them, from the perspective of justice.

(Re)distribution of resources

Resource (re)distribution is a crucial component of environmental justice. By (re)distribution,

we refer to both the outcome in terms of benefits and losses for resettlers and hosts, and the

procedure that led to the outcome. We thus amplify our analysis beyond the issues of “who

gets what” and “to what degree,” to include issues of how resource (re)distribution and

(in)justice affect people’s livelihoods and well-being (Schlosberg and Carruthers 2010, p. 15).

Land distribution is tightly connected to the formalized state ownership of land, strong

state control over land resources and land claimants, and high levels of land-holding

insecurity in Ethiopia, where land is an anchor of state power with historical roots and

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multifaceted implications (Chinigò 2015, Kelly and Peluso 2015). In the resettlement schemes

under analysis, the government promised to provide every resettler-household with two

hectares of farmland, regardless of the household size (Removed by SNR). However, most of

the households received less than two hectares. Furthermore, there was an interesting

differentiation between resettlers and hosts. On average, farmland size increased for resettlers,

while it decreased for the hosts, as indicated in Table 1. Figure 2 disaggregates this result

according to resettlement site. Except the case of Tulama, the mean size of the resettlers’

farmlands was higher after resettlement, whereas it was smaller in all sites for the hosts.

The resource (re)distribution also implicates access to land with irrigation water

sources, which help farmers to minimize the risks associated with rain-fed agriculture. A

comparison of irrigated land in the current and former settlements shows a decline in

irrigation access for resettlers at most of the sites (Table 1). Losing access to water sources

means serious difficulties for farmers to earn their livelihoods from agriculture.

Another important phenomenon related to resource (re)distribution is that the resettlers

removed to former state farm (FSF) sites (Kenaf, Dhidhessa, Jirma) experienced more

farmland-size increase than those relocated to former non-state farm (FNSF) sites. This

tendency may have connections to the widely-held view among government officials that FSF

sites were “empty lands without legitimate landholders” or “lands that should be emptied for

resettlement.” In the eyes of government authorities, the hosts, who first worked for state

farms and then cultivated the land of the collapsed state-farms, were “squatters,” and thus

denied land entitlements.

To understand whether the changes in resource access were statistically significant, we

performed mean comparisons of the changes in farmland and irrigation access before and

after the resettlement. Concerning resettlers, there was a statistically significant increment of

farmland size, z = -9.35, p < .001, with medium effect size (r = -0.34). The median for the size

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of farmland increased from pre-resettlement (0.63) to post-resettlement (1.5) (Table 2).

Conversely, we observed a statistically significant decline in proportion of irrigated land, z = -

7.90, p < 0.001, with medium effect size (r = -0.31). For hosts, mean comparison of farmland

size before and after the resettlement indicated a statistically significant reduction of farmland

size, z = -7.94, p < 0.001, with large effect size (r = -0.51), with median declining from 2 to 1.

The hosts experienced a statistically significant increase in proportion of irrigated land, z = -

2.52, p = 0.012, but with small effect size (r = -0.17).

Mean comparison across the resettlement sites showed that FSF sites were among those

showing the highest gains for resettlers in terms of farmland size, while members of the host

community were displaced at these sites. This was confirmed by our qualitative interviews.

The hosts in Kenaf, for example, were ordered to retreat from cultivating the former state

farms and confine cultivation to the riverbanks, which was one of the reasons for the slight

rise in proportion of irrigated land for the hosts.

The overall pattern implies an increase in farmland size for resettlers and a decline for

hosts, indicating that the hosts suffered land losses due to the resettlement. Our qualitative

interviews revealed the socio-political processes that led to such outcomes. According to our

interview data, political privileges were one of the main causes that led to differentiated

resource (re)distribution. Several informants reported clientelistic relations to village cabinet

members and bribery as the means to gain land access. Some of the people who acquired land

through such privileges even received a state-issued land title. Land titling is, arguably, a

means of improving tenure security; however, if transparency of the resource distribution is

questionable, land titling may formalize inequality.

In order to understand the complexity of access to resources, it is important to consider

the role of power relations. As Ribot and Peluso (2003) note, there can be access without a

right, and right without an access. In the absence of resource rights, political power can enable

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access to resources, and conversely, marginalized power position might deprive people from

realizing their resource access (Sikor and Lund 2009). This is why the analysis of access to

resources should include not only issues of access right, but also issues of access ability (Nygren

and Myatt-Hirvonen 2009).

Fatuma,3 a single mother of three children, narrated how poor resettlers’ access to land

was compromised by newly-arriving, better-off resettlers, who were not registered with the

government as resettlers. According to Fatuma, the newcomers accessed resources through

“relational” mechanisms of access to better-quality land, including bribing village officials.

Fatuma’s experience illustrates the diverse ways of gaining, maintaining, and controlling

resource access (Ribot and Peluso 2003, p. 172), and the political relations in facilitating

hierarchical control.

Given that the state has a powerful role in the Ethiopian resettlement schemes, it is

important to consider the broader political ecology of access to resources. In a debate

broadcasted on Ethiopian television during the 2010 elections, Bekele Garba, an opposition

leader and a former political prisoner, who has been recently released after spending four

years in prison, conceptualized the governmental procedures of land distribution as follows:

According to [Ethiopia’s] constitution and the ruling party’s policy document, land belongs to

the people and the government. Does land, today, really belong to the people?...In our view, land

today is the private property of the ruling-party elite. They sell it as they will; they use it to

cultivate patronage and friendship; they distribute it to their relatives; they use it to entice and

recruit new party members…We believe that land should be distributed equally among citizens.

We understand that land is a decisive resource (First author’s database 2010).

This argument indicates that, although the citizens were presented as having equal access to

3 We use pseudonyms for ethical reasons.

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land both in legal terms and in the governmental rhetoric, in practice, the power to decide on

resource access is controlled by the state and the ruling party.

Before the relocation, the government authorities informed resettlers about the

availability of water and the suitability of the topography for irrigation at their new home

places. The official recruitment campaigns emphasized that the lands in the resettlement sites

are so flat that it would be easy to divert water for irrigation, without any need for motor

pumps. While recalling this rhetoric in a group interview, resettlers in Baqqo, noted that they

had to contribute money in order to buy motor pumps because the area was not apt for

irrigation. The crucial role of access to land and water resources for farmers’ livelihoods

became clear in many interviews:

Our lives fully depend on land…We don’t know where we are heading…There is no irrigation

here…What we produce once a year is very small because of poor land conditions. Despite

toiling heavily, people fell under poverty, and are now struggling like a baby that has recently

started crawling. (Abdi, 29 June 2009)

This metaphor of a “crawling baby” reflects people’s experiences in eking out a living with

meager resources at their new settlements. Abdi’s testimony was not only a personal opinion;

it illustrates people’s collective feelings of injustice concerning the environmental and social

consequences of resettlement. Some host households suffered traumatic loss of lands that

their families had been cultivating for generations. There were no reports of financial

compensation for these losses. Even when compensation is attempted, discrepancies between

local and institutional conceptions of justice may make problematic the idea of resolving

issues of environmental justice through compensation (Martin et al. 2014). Furthermore, the

loss of livelihoods and identities are difficult to address through financial compensation.

There were widespread feelings of fear and frustration among the resettlers and hosts

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concerning the land quality and the resource competition. In Dhidhessa, the land distributed

as farmland was not under cultivation, although it was a cropping season. Instead, the

resettlers were using it for grazing because the soil was not fertile enough for crop production.

Resettlement also provoked tensions among the resettlers and hosts over forest products,

limited off-farm employment opportunities and public services, including education and

health care. In our interviews and informal conversations, both hosts and resettlers

complained about overcrowded schools and the poor quality of health care. Furthermore,

domestic and international land deals increased the competition for land resources, further

constraining the smallholders’ livelihoods. This trend is expected to intensify in the future.

Recognition, representation, and recovery

Limiting questions of justice to the distribution of benefits and burdens ignores the procedural

issues of who decides on resource distribution and how (Fraser 2009). In our analysis, we

examined not only the resettlement schemes from the perspective of who gained and who lost

in terms of resource access, but also how the redistribution of gains and losses came about

and whether the malpractices were redressed. These issues of cultural recognition and

political representation are crucial.

While the government’s selection of the resettlement sites involved visits to the

potential sites by representatives from the resettlers’ areas of origin, there was no clarity on

how the visitors were selected neither among the representatives nor among the “represented”

people. The group composition was not carefully considered, as indicated especially by the

absence of female participants in these visits. Moreover, the visitors did not have any

preplanned contact with the host communities. These issues signify lack of host recognition

and fair representation.

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The official documents on resettlement reflect the governmental views of the rights and

responsibilities of people targeted for resettlement. According to the Ethiopian official policy,

resettlement decisions were based on resettlers’ volition and hosts’ consent (FDRE 2003).

However, according to our interview data, many resettler households were more or less

forcefully evicted from their homelands. People told us about their unwillingness to move

especially for concerns over the children’s education, health issues and the fear of losing

contact with their relatives. This reluctance to move was more intense among female

household members. Simultaneously, resettlement displaced a considerable number of hosts,

although the government’s principle was to “guarantee” that resettlement would not disrupt

the livelihoods of the hosts. These actions violated people’s legal right to land resources,

overriding the Ethiopian Constitution, which states that “Ethiopian peasants have the right to

obtain land without payment and protection against eviction from their possession” (FDRE

1995, Article 40, Item 4).

It seems that the governmental claims of resettler “voluntarism” and host “consultation”

were based on implicit forms of coercion, or, as Hammond (2008, p. 526) states, “they were

forced to ‘choose’ resettlement.” Many informants indicated that the situation was so confusing

that it can be questioned if they really knew where they were heading and in what conditions

they would be living in the future. In the government’s video programs intended to recruit

resettlers, the landscapes of the resettlement sites were recorded during the rainy season, in a

bid to profile the sites as “ever-green,” and coffee trees were shown to people who were later

relocated to non-coffee growing areas. Together with unfulfilled promises, these discrepancies

raise questions concerning the transparency of the procedure.

The need to revise the concept of voluntarism in relation to resettlement has been

emphasized by several researchers (Evrard and Goudineau 2004, Rahmato 2003, Schmidt-

Soltau and Brockington 2007, Yntiso 2002). However, few researchers have critically

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questioned the notion of host consultation. Our study shows that the authorities consulted the

host populations in order to legitimate their own plans, instead of considering the hosts’ hopes

and concerns. The government set the agenda, decided the terms of participation, and

implemented the resettlement program regardless of the hosts’ reactions. Keen to convince

people, the authorities focused on the reasons why the hosts should welcome the resettlers,

emphasizing the need to show ethnic solidarity and alluding to the benefits of cooperation

between the hosts and the resettlers. Through such techniques, the government sought to

prevent any efforts for social contestation or political mobilization.

This kind of treatment of resettlers and hosts was based on the government officials’

cultural recognition of the resettlers as “the miserable who depended on government for food

aid” and “who should be grateful of governmental care in terms of resettlement,” while the host

population was recognized as “inhabitants of areas with unutilized or underutilized resources.”

The officials’ cultural construction of the hosts as squatters, especially at the FSF sites, justified

their eviction without compensation. The hosts demonstrated a strong attachment to the land

they cultivated. Dabala, who worked for a later-defunct state farm, recounted the ordeals: “It is

taken from us. A considerable size of land is taken away from me, including that which I

cultivated and prepared for millet and sorghum.” Dabala expressed the relocation as oppressive

and called out recognition as a missing component of resettlement:

You know what surprises me?…They say that the government brought them [resettlers]

knowingly. The [local] government signed, confirming that there was nobody on this land because

it did not recognize [us]. How did it fail to recognize us? How could we be forgotten after opening

up such a harsh environment for cultivation? (Dabala, 29 June 2009)

The forms of political representation pushed by the government were largely instrumental,

persuading people to participate, but denying them any possibility to be reasonably

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represented (Leeuwis 2004). As Lockie et al. (2007, p. 793) note, in the absence of

deliberative representation, “consultation and participation may be used by assessors,

development proponents, and other agencies simply to secure public support for proposed

change”. Rhetorical statements about local empowerment do not have meaning if people are

denied the opportunity to influence the decisions affecting their lives and livelihoods. Forced

resettlement reflects the problematic nature of political representation that stems from a

willful distortion of local people’s opinions (Berisso 2009). Afterwards, the government

represented the relocations as sweeping success stories through the governmentally-controlled

media (Hammond 2008, p. 532), disregarding the predicaments that resettlers and hosts were

facing.

Despite the regional states’ ostensibly autonomous position and the central government’s

claim of decentralization, in terms of devolution of decision-making power to local

governments and communities, Ethiopia is a highly centralized state, with hierarchical state-

peasant relations and power structures (Chinigò 2015). Under these conditions, local officials

dictate local people because they, themselves, are dictated by higher-level authorities. Instead of

decentralization, with representative local governments and meaningful local inclusion, we

witness a re-concentration of power in resource governance. This is not to suggest that the

governmental constituents from the federal to the local level represent monolithic values, but to

argue that there are overarching interests that shape the government’s relationship with the

resettlement-sites residents and their everyday demands.

While both the resettlers and the hosts often endured subtle forms of hierarchical

suppression “silently,” collective memories of injustice sprang up when people recalled the

resettlement events during our interviews. Our resettler informants articulated how the death,

by live ammunition from government militia, of two people and the injuries of a few others

who refused to leave their homelands aroused fear and anxiety among people scheduled to be

18

relocated. Correspondingly, Hammond (2011, 2008) reports that local officials threatened

people to leave their lands with penalty of forcible eviction, imprisonment, and the cessation

of food aid. According to our interviews, some of the hosts were arrested for raising questions

about their land rights. Such harsh ways of treating people who dared to challenge the

governmental resettlement plans reflect the volatile political situation in Ethiopia. People who

show signs of non-compliance with state directives are likely to face fierce punishment,

making it difficult to dismiss such incidents as isolated cases of injustice.

Despite the limited opportunities for political representation and the concerted efforts

by the state to drain possibilities of social resistance, we disagree somewhat with Hammond

(2011, p. 415), who states that the resettlers became “silently complicitous in their own

exploitation.” We agree that cooptation plays a vital role in maintaining the status quo in

state-people relations among these populations; nevertheless, although resistance is not

reported, it does not indicate its non-existence. People in Ethiopia have rarely become

accomplices when exploited; instead invisible struggles for resource rights and environmental

justice are occurring. As Oliver-Smith (2006, p. 145) notes, resistance involves a continuum

of forms, ranging from passive foot-dragging, non-appearance at official meetings, ignorance

of authorities’ instructions, and other “weapons of the weak” to civil disobedience, protest

meetings, and outright rebellion. In Oromia, overt resistance to resettlement is rare; however,

this does not mean that people were accepting their plight and passively complying with the

state’s directives. Some resettlers left resettlement sites in order to return to their former areas;

some moved to other resettlement sites without the government’s approval; and some

regularly travelled to their former homelands to cultivate their lands there, despite long

distance and the fact that the government declared these lands to be protected for land

rehabilitation purposes.

Limited possibility for social recovery is a cumulative outcome of other dimensions of

19

injustice, indicating their intertwined nature. Our informants implied a complex web of

relations when reflecting on why they were unable to develop sustainable livelihoods several

years after the relocation. Ibsa raised heart-rending questions concerning his and his fellow

resettlers’ difficulties in building sustainable livelihoods and improving the collective well-

being by emphasizing people’s desperate struggle for everyday living, dependent on food aid:

We don’t have any hope of improvement if we continue living here…Poverty will only get closer

and closer. If we express a different opinion and continue complaining, we are frightened that we

may be accused of political motives…The government has [again] started giving us food

aid...How long should this support stay with us? Should we be helped indefinitely? Why don’t we

[become] humans, and even give support to others?...Even if we cannot help others, why don’t we

become self-sufficient? (Ibsa, 25 May 2009)

Interestingly, Ibsa’s comment on the impossibilities of livelihood recovery also points out the

constrained circumstances in which livelihood concerns are allowed to be expressed. He

indicated that the political silencing of any dissent is a common technique of governing the

“ungovernable.” Ibsa’s fear that any demand for improved access to resources might be

construed by the government as a sign of resistance reveals the problematic status of these

people’s cultural recognition and political representation as citizens, with many implications

for their collective well-being. Under limited access to resources and political conditions

characterized by harsh control and intimidation, it is difficult for these communities to

achieve social recovery. The traumatic experiences of separated families and the institutional

structures stifling transparent political representation increase people’s difficulties in

achieving social well-being. Despite the institutional oppression, the resettlers’ and hosts’

aspirations to become self-sufficient and be able to help others in need illustrate these

populations’ concerns for social recovery, meaningful social life, and capability for collective

20

well-being.

Conclusion

This article has analyzed the processes and outcomes of state-implemented resettlements from

the perspectives of political ecology and environmental justice, with particular attention to

resource redistribution, cultural recognition, political representation, and social recovery. Our

study has shown that there are multifaceted links between these components in the sense that

people’s cultural recognition and opportunities for political representation and social recovery

influence their access to resources and vice versa. A comprehensive approach to resettlement

and resource governance should take into account the diverse dimensions of justice, even if all

the dimensions might not be equally important on every occasion.

In the resettlement schemes of Oromia, both resettlers and hosts were displaced in the

process of relocation. Displacement deprived people’s access to resources and evoked the

authorities’ unfair recognition of them as miserable people, dependent on food aid, or as

squatters who did not have right to land. Both resettlers and hosts were unevenly represented in

the resettlement planning and implementation. These issues make crucial the questions of who

decides for whom, and who lives the consequences, concerning the political ecology and

environmental justice of resettlement. This is especially the case when disadvantaged people

take the burden of government-imposed decisions. Together, these processes put

insurmountable limits on possibilities for social recovery, illustrating the intertwined nature of

distribution, recognition, representation, and recovery.

Our findings suggest that, before implementing any resettlement scheme, a government

should consider whether the conditions prompt people’s relocation, or if there are other

alternatives for improving people’s livelihoods. Further, it is necessary to consider whether

there are people inhabiting the relocation sites, or owning resource rights therein. For feasible

21

resettlement, one should consider how the benefits and burdens will be shared among resettlers

and hosts? Well-considered answers to these questions would enhance the inclusiveness of

resettlement policies and practices.

Given that the Ethiopian government is implementing land leases for large-scale

investments, relocation programs may become harsher in the future. How can investors lease

hundreds of thousands of hectares of land while land is scarce? As recent land-leasing analyses

warn (Kelly and Peluso 2015, Makki 2012), the government discursively creates “land

abundance” while reality indicates otherwise, and materially avails new frontiers for capitalist

expansion by forcefully displacing local resource-users. Such procedures foster environmental

injustices and human-rights violations, making it crucial to analyze resettlement processes and

outcomes from the perspective of political ecology and environmental justice. The government

justifies the land leases in terms of creating employment opportunities for local people and

facilitating technology transfer to modernize local economy. This trend reflects the lack of

recognition for customary land rights and local livelihoods. As long as local residents are not

democratically represented in the decision-making bodies, they will continue to lose in resource

(re)distribution and bear the costs in struggling to meet their livelihoods under increasing

inequality.

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