Debay, Alemu Bezie

Land-use changes and agricultural expansion practices are directly associated with deforestation, land degradation, and the subsequent consequences on water bodies. Understanding these practices and perspectives is necessary to develop policies for the sustainable management of the commons. However, in densely populated agricultural regions, the views of local communities remain poorly understood and their involvement in decision-making processes is limited. This study explored stakeholder perspectives in two Ethiopian lake ecosystems, Abaya-Chamo and Tana, using Q-methodology. The Q-sort analysis identified three discourses. The identified discourses were sustainable land-use, economic-centric pragmatism and agricultural expansionism. The sustainable land-use discourse, mainly advocated by experts and academics working in environmental conservation, indicates ecological concerns with socioeconomic considerations. Economic-centric is dominated by smallholder farmers from the Abaya-Chamo Basin, who prioritise economic gains and blame environmental conservation policies for their ineffectiveness. Smallholder farmers in the Tana Basin take a pragmatic approach to economic development by intensively using resources. There were distinctive opinions among the experts and smallholder farmers in the two basins. This indicates that managing lakes as commons requires participatory approaches that promote stakeholders' understanding and ownership and develop balanced strategies to address complex agroecological challenges, such as water hyacinth invasion.