The Gedeo Cultural Landscape

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The Gedeo Cultural Landscape: A Testament to Ancient Agroforestry Practices and Indigenous Knowledge

The Gedeo Cultural Landscape, located in the Gedeo Zone of the South Ethiopia Regional State, stands as a remarkable testament to the ancient agroforestry practices and indigenous knowledge of the Gedeo people. Inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023, this region spans the eastern edge of the Main Ethiopian Rift, reaching altitudes between 1,307 and 3,072 meters above sea level. Home to approximately 2,550,000 Gedeo individuals, this cultural landscape offers a unique blend of natural beauty, historical significance, and ongoing cultural practices that have shaped the identity of the Gedeo people for millennia.

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UNESCO Description of the World Heritage Site

The property lies along the eastern edge of the Main Ethiopian Rift, on the steep escarpments of the Ethiopian highlands. An area of agroforestry, it utilizes multilayer cultivation with large trees sheltering indigenous enset, the main food crop, under which grow coffee and other shrubs. The area is densely populated by the Gedeo people whose traditional knowledge support local forest management. Within the cultivated mountain slopes are sacred forests traditionally used by local communities for rituals associated with the Gedeo religion, and along the mountain ridges are dense clusters of megalithic monuments, which came to be revered by the Gedeo and cared for by their elders.

UNESCO Justification of the World Heritage Site

Criterion (iii): The Gedeo Cultural Landscape is an exceptional testimony to the long-standing and still living indigenous Gedeo cultural tradition of agroforestry with its layered cultivation of mature trees providing shelter for enset, and more recently coffee as well as shrubs and other food crops. For centuries, or perhaps even millennia, in what is now the southwest of Ethiopia, these traditional agroforestry practices have provided a sustainable living for communities, based on traditional knowledge and belief systems that reserved certain parts of the forest as sacred areas and protected megalithic clusters of steles as ritual sites.

Criterion (v): The Gedeo Cultural Landscape is as an outstanding example of how communities over time have devised systems to optimising the constraints and opportunities of their natural environment. The Gedeo indigenous Ballee system combines customary laws, rules, regulations, norms, and codes of social relations to govern interactions with nature. The resulting landscape not only supports the highest density of population in Africa, but it also maintains harmony with species, rich biodiversity and produces high quality organic coffee. It is though highly vulnerable to a range of social and economic pressures that are threatening its resilience and sustainability.

Encyclopedia Record: Gedeo Cultural Landscape

The Gedeo Cultural Landscape is a region of the Gedeo Zone, part of the South Ethiopia Regional State in south-central Ethiopia. It stretches across the eastern flank of the Main Ethiopian Rift, ranging from 1,307 to 3,072 metres above sea level. The region is home to roughly 2,550,000 Gedeo people. Dotted with sacred forests and megalithic monuments, the region has been the homeland of the Gedeo people for thousands of years. Traditional agroforestry is practiced in the region by the Gedeo people. Because of these traditional practices, its long history of occupation, and the cultural importance of the region, the Gedeo Cultural Landscape was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023.

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