Yihenew Zewdie

Dr. Yihenew Zewdie is a socio-economist with a research interest in natural resource management issues. He holds a BA degree in Economics and has an MSc degree in Development Planning. His PhD, which was completed in October 2002 in England, focuses on issues of forest tenure and forest-based livelihoods in the context of highland Kafa, Southwest Ethiopia. He has extensive work experience in the areas of natural resource management and food security and has written several field-based survey reports and articles on forest dependency, rural livelihoods, local organisations and resource tenure administration, and gender and forest access.

He is currently engaged in updating his PhD thesis for publication and is reading around the subject of his research interest. The latter focuses on examining issues of forest-based livelihoods and rural poverty; interface between resource tenure policies and local level access processes; community-led forest governance experiences; and the relevance of collaborative resource management schemes to the practice of decentralised planning in Africa.