The Environment, Culture and Prosperity

The Environment, Culture and Prosperity

Our heartfelt condolences to everyone affected by the sudden landslide in Gofa, Southern Ethiopia, and our thoughts are with those who have lost their lives and their loved ones. We commend the ongoing rescue efforts to support families in grief and to re-establish society on a familial and emotionally stable foundation.

The Healing Capacity Of the Indigenous Nature

• The heights of countries' noble prosperity and the refinement of civilisation across different cultures and parts of the World indicate an inexorable connection between a heritage's deep knowledge of natural science and a culture's health and prosperity. Without a doubt, this rule is considered obvious in this context and in other sciences as well. Still, it is particularly evident in biology, as it is so closely linked to human health and well-being, and to the necessary foundation of know-how. However, the natural sciences all too often suffer from a rigid stubbornness and must therefore be subject to the strict guardianship of advanced psychology and humanism.  

• The indigenous Juniper forest's natural health and fertile beauty illuminate with precision its healing capacity and importance for water preservation. However, the loss of a native forest also warns of the severe Nature and habitat destruction that occurred with the introduction of the Australian Eucalyptus tree, which, due to prehistoric distances, lacks evolutionary compatibility with Ethiopian endemism.

The Nature of Rains and Erosion

• A foreign and defence-optimised chemical component in the Eucalyptus tree causes severe erosion, as evidenced by the water running through Addis Ababa during the rainy seasons. For every rain period, the layer of fertile soil gets thinner. If nothing is done now, nothing will be left for new vegetation in a couple of years, and the erosion will be irreversible.

• Erosion: Because the tactical toxins of the Eucalyptus tree have eradicated the natural ground cover, the only thing to hold the soil is the sporadic web of roots of these Australian Eucalyptus trees. Therefore, the soil-holding capacity of Eucalyptus is very moderate compared with the indigenous trees initially covering the slopes of Entoto.

• When the new indigenous forest has grown for several years, and action has been taken to halt erosion, the risk of flooding will be eliminated because the soil's infiltration capacity (permeability) will be well above today's levels. A possible future return of native forests could balance the constraints of the landscape and man's land use, thereby enriching the present wildlife and the demands of civilization for irrigation and harvest.

Ethiopia's Highland Nature  

The Country's Precious Water

This image forms the basis for understanding
 nature's water-bearing body. The water is kept
  here, in the totality of this image, where both
 Vegetation, soil and rock make up this vital
water-bearing body to create this highly
valuable water-harbouring landscape.
Study of the water's complexity

Ethiopia's Natural Water Production

Furthermore, history's misdeeds against Ethiopia's natural forests and Nature severely wounded the prehistoric ecological and geological heritage by disrupting the natural and critical processes of original soil formation derived from the endemic decomposition of leaves and twigs. This genetically optimised process for the indigenous trees' ground composting of the Ethiopian forest's leaves and twigs was vital to prevent the initiation of erosive torrents. Thus, in the past, the top layer of the ground, a fibrous humus, was well-held by the dense and intertwined undergrowth, giving the root systems of the native vegetation the required assistance and time to serve the land by directing the deluges to fill into the mass of this mountainous highland.

The Natural Water Bodies of the Highland

The historical malefactor against the original Ethiopian Nature severely weakened the country's original soil system, which is essential for leading and assisting rainwater to the natural underground aquifers. Hence, a severe reduction in the remaining soils' ability to retain moisture occurred, thus reducing the water delivered to the natural aquifers and, of course, decreasing citizens' future chances of obtaining clean household water. Indeed, this phenomenon also poses severe threats to the survival of indigenous species.

Pinterest: Ethiopia's Work and Obligations

An Origin of Health and Prosperity

The Forgotten Cradle of Wealth & Beauty

The Native Podocarpus & Rosa abyssinica

An Evolutionary Legacy from Times of Natural Wealth.

This peculiarity in seed design, setting kernels to sprout beneath a protective shield of dense undergrowth, has its evolutionary origin in prehistoric lushness. This tree grows the young seed with an exposed stem and a highly sensitive stalk. This unique way of the seedlings' first greenery traces their origin to the beginning of these trees' (evolution) and to epochs long before any human culture or species.

A Prehistory of the  Natural Guardians.

Through this evolutionary prehistory, these seed stalks and kernels were naturally received with moist, typically loose, absorbing soil (humus) and dense protective undergrowth that could hide and shield these tender, exposed, vertically raised kernel stalks.

A Beautiful Memory Attracts Modern Science and Art

With glowing passion and warmth, it is still spoken among the residents of Entoto about when, a reasonable time after the rainy season, the water level stood one metre higher. It is thus quite close to the time when Entoto's mountain massif and its canyons could carry significantly higher water quantity and, therefore, supply the population in the capital with fresh water to a much greater extent. This beautiful memory is still very vivid today, with the profound history of Entoto's rock-sheltered streams and enchanting nature rock baths.

Benefits from the Establishment Of the Park

A healthy relationship is undoubtedly essential for human health and real Nature. Indeed, deeply interconnected phenomena within the World and Nature reveal their overwhelming influence on human well-being. Since the natural environment is often considered the fundamental core of human health, its impact on human health and prosperity is particularly evident. However, a development from antiquity of the insidious hierarchical governing of the past caused fears among many nations. Therefore, the most important appears to be healing past wrongdoings and addressing the devastating humiliation of degraded health, thereby repairing and meeting the population's most critical need for a safe, meaningful and beautiful daily life.

The Healing Nature of the Native Forest

 Restoration With Original Trees and Plants

Benefits from the Establishment of the Park

Indigenous Trees: A Legacy Of National Importance

The natural health and fertile beauty in this indigenous Juniper forest illuminate with precision the healing ability of a native forest and the severe Nature and habitat destruction that occurred with the introduction of the Eucalyptus tree. Due to these shortcomings in the Eucalyptus plantation's water-retention capacity, it cannot counterbalance the uneven distribution of rainfall. Therefore, this eucalyptus poisoning of the ground creates a devastating water-repelling fabric in the upper soil layer, all too often followed by torrential flash floods and flooding in the downslope areas. 

The Torrential Rains & Erosion

Historical Background: [Foreign Chemical]

This chemical component in the foreign Australian Eucalyptus tree causes severe erosion, as evidenced by the water running through Addis during the rainy seasons. Regretably, for every rain period, the layer of fertile soil gets thinner. However, with the introduction of the Park in 1995, Ethiopia's obvious duty led to a genuine commitment, as the revival of a historical Nature found the country's true cradle by restoring a landscape capable of creating healthy freshwater, reflecting a nation's natural character. 

Erosion: Caused by this Eucalyptus tree's chemical, the only thing to hold the soil was the sporadic roots of the trees. With erosion caused by the Eucalyptus trees, the reintroduction of indigenous trees reached a critical point. 

Videos: Soil Erosion Demo

Pinterest: Ethiopia's Work and Obligations

 

Nature History & Environmental Science

Reiterating the apparent importance of careful research in natural science provides a clear example before introducing hazardous methods or foreign species into an original, endemic, and vulnerable habitat. A chemical component in the leaves and roots of Eucalyptus trees prevents the growth of both other Ethiopian trees and herbs. This chemical component leads to a monoculture with Eucalyptus as the only tree species and eventually no ground cover.

Ethiopia's Natural History

Water Guardian Functions

With the guardian image of the landscape's own mountain-anchored network of roots and stems, a complex picture of evolution's optimization of Ethiopia's original vegetation emerges. In the past, the endemic vegetation in Ethiopia's highlands consisted of a primaeval forest with an intricate network of stems and deeply anchored roots, functioning as countless efficient reinforcements of the otherwise tender soil. Hence, an ancient natural legacy reveals its precious presence within Nature's cradle, when the roots and the surrounding Earth became intricately dependent on each other, thus marking the beginning of evolution as the actual purifying water gates to the ground and aquifers. Therefore, in ancient times, Ethiopia's considerable wealth from annual deluges that wet the land was not as contradictory, mainly because the abundant natural vegetation in Ethiopia's highlands past then still had the capacity of assisting the water's way within the landscape instead of the disastrous rejection of the deluges caused by incompatible trees' chemicals and shortsighted over-exploitation of the precarious part of the landscape.

The Environment and the Loss of Civilizations

Destructive heritage within many of today's clans of
autocrats give the culture a treacherous shift with
 a legacy of an obscure genetic inflow.
Evolutionary anthropology
 

Directed by this despotism in the past, the political rule of terror created a life-threatening situation against the inhabitants of these original wealthy civilizations. In their desperation for their families, very few dared, and even fewer survived their attempts to undertake the necessary technology or work to promote these water masses to benefit the population during heat and drought. Therefore, this law of silent terror effectively and continuously deteriorated the soil layers' natural strength until this country's ground no longer produced abundant crops. Thus, the lack of basic knowledge and empathy within many early despotic autocracies initiated the decline of these rich cultures, ultimately causing irreversible destruction and the erosion of land, often in prolonged and extreme poverty.

Secrets From a Time Lost in Shadows and Turmoil

A Forgotten and Forbidden Historical Past

Humanity's Dangerous Legacy

The Artworks: Leonardo da Vinci

A Lost High Cultural Era of Humanity's History

Indeed, the opportunities for advancing humankind's cultural cradle endure long periods of direct and subconscious censorship of nefarious rigidity, and even aeons of degeneration, due to deeply corrupt reasons, in a legacy of outright bestial-induced elements hierarchically enforced from an early time in humankind's history. Therefore, well concealed behind generations of enforced censorship, the subconscious tries to endure the pressure in a delicate balance, even when confronted with legacies of bestiality from the morbid selection of the past. Thus, due to the deceived persona of the population, their cultural behaviour becomes corrupted, thereby obstructing and obscuring the paths and visions of humankind.

A Humanity Subconsciously Behind Bars

However, behind the bars of humankind's cage, made of fabricated obstacles and statistical social norms, prevails nothing more than a culturally enforced inheritance where the human culture endures. Thus, humankind's civilisations throughout history have often had to endure long periods of psychological and physiological torment in cycles of repeating cataclysmic paradigms and in personal experiences of corrosive agony over what is wrong, where they usually never find the natural source of their discomfort or its hidden background. 

The Loss Of The Country's Souls and Water

The Deceptive Legacy Of Glamorous Terror

In this dangerously despotic political environment, it was important for the working class to carefully avoid any public signs of individual economic success or personal interest in society's development. As a result, the historical autocracies' despotism succeeded in its aim of personal profit by shunning temporary costs to humans and the country, thereby manipulating the inhabitants into deadlocks that were deceptively concealed and dangerously debilitating. Due to considering the threat from the psychopathy of the despotic power elite, this susceptible situation was then causing an imminent danger for any person aspiring to progress for their country's population's well-being, and thereby becoming the vulnerable target for the power's jealousy in almighty megalomania.

 The History of the Environment

The History of the Environment

The Prehistoric Legacy of Water and Plants 

The prosperity of civilization in different cultures and parts of the World indicates an evident connection between an in-depth knowledge of biology and the specific culture's potential for development. Without a doubt, this rule is considered healthy in this context and in other sciences as well. Still, it is particularly evident in biology, as it is so closely related to human health and well-being. However, the insidious hierarchical governing terror of the past caused severe scares among many nations, inflicting humiliation in severe starvation and fearful aversions, thus damaging the population's most critical needs for a safe environment in daily life and duties.

Psychopathy Against the Population

The Loss Of Nature, Health and Prosperity

Due to the historical and regular evidence of shortcomings in empathy, intellect, and knowledge within international cultures, demoralizing has reoccurred throughout history, followed by the deterioration of the environment. This destruction of the environment occurs because an ignorant, nefariously fabricated elite demands supremacy in overwhelming megalomania with the delusion of grandeur. Thus, the leaders of these dictatorships created their businesses in greedy shortsighted reluctance for the temporary costs regarding the concerns for humans and the country and, maybe most devastating, reproduced their prestigious ideals of psychopathic terror. 

Ethiopia's Historic Waterways

The Waterfall: Blue Nile, towards the Capital
The Highlands and their Historical Waters

Entoto Natural Park and its Historical Water
The topographical configuration of Entoto Natural Park's mountain crest has the curious result that two raindrops that simultaneously moisten the soil of Entoto's mountain crest, only a centimetre apart, will have quite different destinies. After a long journey through the River Nile, one waterway will reach the Mediterranean Sea. In contrast, the other watershed passes through Addis Ababa, eventually evaporating in the Danakil Desert, whereas the Awash River never reaches the sea.

The Ethiopian Highland is the Legendary Water Provider

However, this primary Ethiopian source of the Nile River is only one of several Ethiopian rivers that contribute to the Nile's total water. Consequently, the total amount of water delivered from the Ethiopian Highlands to the Nile is enriched by additional waterways beyond the Blue Nile, the primary water contributor and a fundamental historical source of the legendary Nile River.

The Valuable Knowledge of Antiquity

The Ancient Roman cistern

"Piscina Mirabilis"

Aquifers and Impressive Technology of History

The knowledge of these natural aquifers and their synergies with water technologies was a highly valued historical legacy of antiquity. In their context, they are a well-known concept that helps explain how a mighty mountain massif that receives abundant, regular precipitation and chilly temperatures also provides the conditions for harbouring this water. However, constructing artificial dams to meet the water needs of a larger population has, in modern times, proven hazardous in relation to nearby settlements. In ancient times, a technology was developed to create hidden, huge, and safe mountain halls to prevent a fatal collapse of man-made dams.  The Forgotten Sciences from Antiquity

Underground Reservoirs

These historically and very early developed technical and geological-based methods for managing and saving enormous amounts of water are often technically complex and aesthetically grandiose. The methods of this water technology vary significantly between different cultures and continents. Still, in the legacy of history, they are the basis of ancient civilizations' most essential and original technological achievements. However, the quality and quantity of water depend on a well-covered landscape of healthy native vegetation.  

The Environmental Restoration With Native Trees

The Indigenous Juniper and Podocarpus trees 

The Indigenous Juniperus procera (Am: Tid) and Podocarpus falcatus (P. gracilior) (Am:  Zigba) (Or:  Birbirsa) 

These endemic trees, scarce at Entoto, are struggling to survive in the toxic environment created by the eucalyptus. The barren, eroded lands resulting from eucalyptus' toxin-induced effects have disrupted the reproductive capacity of the endemic Podocarpus tree. A century ago, the international scientific community was unaware of the need to examine the environmental toxicity of plants and animals. With their dense network of roots, the original Ethiopian trees formed a reinforcing, tangled indigenous vegetation with a prehistoric quality of tremendous strength, delivered from aeons of evolution. This urgent situation calls for immediate action and further scientific examination.

Trees from Dreams' Forgotten Aeons 

Adorns a Gorgeous Landscape

Entoto Natural Park (Nursery)

Requirements of Native Seedlings

However, much work has been done to reform the upper soil layer and establish a protective undergrowth. Hence, exploring the new generation of naturally grown saplings from this highly blessed historic tree would be very pleasing. Yet these trees from past aeons still grace Entoto's landscape. They appear here, with beautiful patinas from a forgotten era, as ancient, furrowed entities in magical grace within the captivating landscape of Entoto Natural Park.

Environment and Prosperity

The indigenous Podocarpus falcatus (P. gracilior) tree is scarce at Entoto and does not appear to compete with the Eucalyptus planted surroundings. It seems that it is no longer possible to give surviving progeny in the barren, eroded, exposed lands that have been formed since the introduction of the alien eucalyptus tree over a hundred years ago.

• However, much work has been done to reform the upper soil layer and establish a protective undergrowth. It would be a very significant surprise to receive information about a new generation of this highly blessed historic tree, which still grows in a magical, graceful, and appealing landscape.

• This tree has an exposed and sensitive seed-laying design opposite its otherwise healthy, rugged seed coat, including its fruit (cones). Here, it's nut-like dry; last year's pendants decorate the mighty mother trees with their seed (cones) in ancient-looking packaging that surrounds and protects the very fertile seeds and provides inspiring, sophisticated memories from last year's season.

The Science of Indigenous Ancient Trees

DNA Selections of Seeds
(Oxford Academic)

Choosing the Right Mother Tree for Seed

The distant location but within the same country, developed fauna and flora have undergone an extremely long evolutionary optimization to best adapt to the unique conditions of its geological and surrounding genetic characteristics. The unique habitat in a particular region within a country imprints its properties on the indigenous wildlife, shaping their DNA in line with the region's unique climate. 

The Importance of Seeds' Evolutionary Heritage

Hence, due to its isolated location on a country's mountainside or within its secluded gorge, the endemic tree developed a distinct genetic heritage and a unique soil. Therefore, the trees' evolutionary connection to a country's landscape makes a precious legacy for their seeds, which inherit well-adapted genetic characteristics to the location's biological uniqueness. 

Assessing Seeds Based on the Climate Zones of the Country

Hence, the genetic legacy shaped by Ethiopia's various climates and altitudes creates trees that, although belonging to the same species, have developed distinct genetic heritages to adapt to these different climate zones. Thus, the mistake of using seed from a tree with its genetic origin in a moist, shady gorge as seedlings on a dry southern slope undermines these trees' ability to survive, as well as that of other organisms, including humans.

The Science of Ancient Trees

The Sciences of Ancient Trees

The Scientific Importance of Old and Ancient Trees

[ The Eucalyptus Tree ]

An Implantation of a Foreign Tree Species

A Massive Loss of Public Health and Drinking Water

The Eucalyptus Problem

The Eucalyptus Tree and Its Tactical Toxicity.
A chemical component with an intricate competition-oriented toxic defence system in the leaves and roots of Eucalyptus trees prevents the growth of other trees and herbs. This chemical component leads to a monoculture with Eucalyptus as the only tree species and eventually no ground cover. This chemical component causes severe erosion, as evidenced by the water running through Addis during the rainy seasons.

 

The Environmental danger of the Eucalyptus tree.  

Due to these shortcomings in the Eucalyptus plantation's water-retention capacity, it cannot counterbalance the uneven distribution of rainfall. The result is often torrential flooding in the down-slope areas, in this case, the northern district of Addis Ababa. In August 1994, it posed a fatal danger due to sudden, overwhelming flooding.

Conclusion and Wonderful Solution

The stalk of the native Podocarpus tree's seed is considerably more significant in height at an early stage of its soil germination than the equivalent of the Juniper tree seed. Because the Podocarpus tree has the uniqueness of raising its appetizing greenery to the sensitively exposed height of its brittle stems, an excellent and traditional solution arises thanks to the sharp thorn defence of Rosa abyssinica:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_abyssinica

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorns,_spines,_and_prickles

Ethiopia's Unique Highland Landscape and Climate

Regarding Ethiopia's unique climate, which varies by season, with months of heavy downpours over the country's characteristic rugged landscape topography followed by months of blistering sunshine, difficulties naturally arise for the survival of planted saplings. The long prehistoric Nature of Nature's evolutionary optimised stability in sheer strength and water absorption, as found in the original native vegetation, is thus often impossible to recreate with a simple planting of fragile young seedlings. Therefore, Ethiopia's neglected indigenous Nature demands knowledge and work before any sign of evident healing of the country's Nature and freshwater conservation. Consequently, it is often associated with considerable frustration to recreate healthy landscape biotopes by replanting young native plants on exposed, eroded mountain slopes and devastated high plateaus. Instead, young plants planted sporadically will require tender care, including irrigation, protection from grazing animals, and shade from the blistering midday sun. This recreation of Nature's shielding functions thus requires dedicated restoration work to regain the guardian effect of a lost indigenous forest with its protective undergrowth.

Human and Nature in Harmony

A Classic Castle at the Spring Sources

Common check dams offer an opportunity to recreate an environment that is almost ideally suited to people and Nature. For example, placing a building like Fasilides Bath next to a stream on the high plateau would provide Nature with a fantastic water supply. However, in contrast to the water technology of check dams in ordinary, historic buildings, like Fasilides Bath in the picture to the right, would serve as a water contribution to the surrounding landscape, while also enhancing the attraction's capacity as the most beautiful location for facilities. With dramatically classic architecture, this magnificent Castle lodge with a restaurant overlooking the water entices fantasies and dreams in the cosiest, hiking-friendly surroundings, within and for the Nature of the wilderness.

The Complications Of Indigenous Forest Restoration

Therefore, it is impossible to recreate a stable and healthy ecosystem by replanting a few native trees on a devastated plateau; instead, these young plants, planted sporadically, will require tender care, including irrigation, protection from grazing animals, and shade from the blistering seasonal sun. Furthermore, on the slopes, these young plants most often require a temporary stabilizer of the ground and protection from something that mimics the wind- and sun-protective effect of many mother trees. In addition, sporadically placed young plants can only offer a very rudimentary and weak protective network against erosion; instead, there is the obvious risk that these young plants will, in all probability, soon perish in the struggle against the great forces of Nature.

The Precarious and Fragile Restoration Of the Lost Nature

Scientific research, which involves considerable time and labour for environmental restoration, requires massive protection projects to provide young plants with a replacement for the lost biotope and its vital natural protective properties. Hence, restoring the primordial forest's shielding armour with its lost biotope is complicated and requires significant effort to recreate a reliable substitute for the lost primordial type of Nature.  Therefore, due to a century of toxins from the foreign eucalyptus tree and the absence of the endemic protective functions of mother trees and other native plants, enormous efforts are required to recreate these guardian functions for the tender indigenous seedlings, which otherwise do not survive the very exposed ground.

ADDRESS

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Bole Road, Ras Mengesha Siyum House

Phone: - +251-11 515 8802

www.eht.et

info@eht.et/

ethiopian.heritage.trust@gmail.com

The Ethiopian Heritage Trust

The organization, Ethiopian Heritage Trust, is devoted to restoring Ethiopia's indigenous Nature and sincerely preserving the country's precious cultural heritage. With high priority, the Ethiopian Heritage Trust laid the ground for understanding the importance of an indigenous forest's effect on the country's natural health. The organization's work with planting native saplings illuminates the landscape's healing capacity with precision, thanks to this native forest. The toxic eucalyptus tree emphasises the importance of careful research regarding knowledge in natural science. Such a history of incompatible species provides a clear warning before introducing foreign species into unique and vulnerable habitats.

Ethiopian Heritage Trust 

for Entoto Natural Park

Volunteering

Membership

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Plant a tree with Inside Ethiopia Tours.

Inside Ethiopia, Tours invites you to be part of an unforgettable experience in Entoto Natural Park. We will meet in our office, located in Kazanchis (just in front of the UNECA back entrance), and our guide will accompany you in the local taxis up to the mountain. This is an excellent opportunity for you to experience Ethiopian commuting.

Once we arrive on Entoto Mountain, where the capital city was first founded in 1886, you will undoubtedly feel like having mentholated topical ointment. We want to promote indigenous seedling planting in Ethiopia by contributing to the Ethiopian Green Legacy.

https://insideethiopiatours.com/tour/entoto-natural-park/

Erosion Prevention Ideas: https://www.pinterest.com/entoto0351/_saved/

The Science of Indigenous Ancient Trees:

The Science of Ancient Trees

The Sciences of Ancient Trees

The Scientific Importance of Old and Ancient Trees

Environmental Ideas from Pinterest:

Terracing
Check Dams
Water Reservoirs
Spring Water Ideas
Retaining Walls
Terraced Micro-Basins

Videos: Planting Technology

Ethiopian Heritage Trust - Plantation of Seedlings

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Handbook

Useful trees and shrubs for Ethiopia:

Identification, Propagation and

 Management for 17 Agroclimatic Zones

Azene Bekele-Tesemma

Edited by

Bo Tengnäs, Ensermu Kelbesa, Sebsibe Demissew and Patrick Maundu

The contents of this handbook may be reproduced without special permission. However, acknowledgement of the source is requested. The photographers and artists concerned must be contacted for reproduction of illustrations. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Agroforestry Centre.

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Ethiopian Heritage Trust (UK)

A not-for-profit charity supporting the Ethiopian Heritage Trust in Addis Ababa

Donate

The total amount you donate will be used in Ethiopia.
The Trust is registered with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs for Gift Aid.

Ethiopian Heritage Trust (UK)

Donate: https://www.ethiopianheritagetrustuk.org/donate