More than 400 million people in the developing world depend on dryland agriculture for their livelihoods. Dryland agriculture involves a complex combination of productive components: staple crops, vegetables, livestock, trees and fish interacting principally with rangeland, cultivated areas and watercourses. Managing risk and enhancing productivity through diversification and sustainable intensification is critical to securing and improving rural livelihoods.

Grazing exclosures are a cost-effective means of restoring or enhancing the productivity of communal lands in Ethiopia. An extension of the traditional practice of excluding grazing from communal areas to enable regeneration of vegetation, exclosures provide much needed livelihood and environmental benefits. The success of the exclosure approach faces several challenges to their scaling by government and civil society, including inequity and competition within and among communities, rates of economic return, and individualisation of the commons.