1. Assessing Livelihood And Environmental Impacts Of Secure Access To Land For Landless Youth Under The Ethiopia Sustainable Land Management Program
WB Land and Poverty Conference
March 21-23, 2017
Shewakena Abab, Daniel Monchuk 
World Bank Group
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

2. Background The youth 'bulge' in many developing countries
increase in life expectancy leading to longer waits for inheriting land
the adoption of labor saving technologies reducing the need for manual labor further highlight the plight of rural youth who are unable to access land as a source of livelihoods

3. Ethiopian context Small family land holdings
Average household land holdings of less than 1 ha
youth 'bulge' in rural areas
37% of the population is aged 15-34
Evidence that a lack of land has resulted in a sharp outmigration of youth in recent years
=> Strategies to keep rural youth engaged in their rural communities can serve multiple goals by mitigating the potential problems associated with migration as well fostering rural development and growth.

4. Providing Landless Youth with access and formal rights to land
SLMP-2
degraded communal lands at different stages of treatment are allocated to landless youths – organized into groups – in exchange for their restoring the land to a productive state by applying appropriate SLM practices.
Pilot led by the Ethiopia Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources (MoANR) with support from the World Bank (WB).
Additional support for income-generating activities and self-help groups
Received the WB President’s award for innovation and excellence in June 2017 

5. Summary statistics from sample of watersheds (collected Dec 2017 by SLMP-2 project support unit of MoANR)
Region
Number of watersheds sampled
No of landless youth in the watersheds
Area of communal land treated/ rehabilitated (ha)
Area of communal land transferred to landless youth (ha)
No of landless youth who received landholder certificate or other forms of legal documentation
Share of landless youth with access to land (%)
Land area transferred per landless youth (ha/person)
Type of documentation securing access to land
Certificate
Contract
Tigray 2
5,286
5,196
748
1,789
34%
0.42
Amhara 4
4695
989.16
85.81
536
11%
0.16
Oromia
3692
6340.5
167.34
251 7%
0.67 3
SNNP
2609
5537 20 14 1%
1.43 1
Total (watersheds where land transfer has taken place) 10
14,218
11,007
1,021
2,590
18%
0.39 8
Total 13
16282
18063
1021
2590
16%

6. The next phase of WB supported SLM programming…
Resilient Landscapes and Livelihoods Program (RLLP)
interest in scaling up, further refining the landless youth activity
The BIG Q: Does this intervention really work?

7. Research questions
Compared with landless youth who were not targeted by the project under this initiative:
R1: Are the livelihoods of landless youth improved as a result of receiving access to land in exchange for their rehabilitating degraded communal land under the project? In particular, :
R1a: Do they have a higher level of income/generate more economic output?
R1b: Do they have more secure livelihood (actual and perceived)?
R2: Are landless youth targeted under this intervention less likely to migrate outside their community?
Among the landless youth who have gained access to land under this initiative:
R3: is there a difference in the types of investments and activities undertaken by those individuals whose land rights are assigned as part of a youth group (i.e. collective/joint rights) vs. those assigned individually.

8. Designing and implementing an impact evaluation
Need to generate robust evidence to inform whether or not further scaling up of this intervention is justified.
… easier said than done …

9. Considerations for designing a rigorous IE
Is the intervention homogeneous?
The more uniform and ubiquitous the treatment, the easier it is to attribute any change in outcomes to the intervention itself.
If there are multiple variations of the same intervention - in terms of process, activities, selection of candidate beneficiaries and sites - the more difficult it becomes.

10. Variations on the intervention (currently observed and potential)
Documentation of land rights:
How are land rights documented? Certificate vs. lease
Communal vs. individual tenure
At present only communal – looking at individual rights an interesting prospect
Bundle of rights and time horizon
Currently not standard, variations within and between regions
Security of rights
Quality and location of land
Selection of landless youth
Controlling for ability, gender balance
Opportunities for randomization

11. Next steps Defining the treatment arms
What aspects of the intervention can be ‘standardized’? Which cannot?
Input at all levels particularly important
If feasible, move forward with IE design, planning, data collection, implementation, etc.