The Status of Green spaces and Green space Participatory Management in the City of Addis Ababa

The unprecedented rapid urbanization of Addis Ababa, coupled the city’s high population growth has been entailing intricacies on city’s management, amongst which Green spaces management constitute a part. In pursuit of the brown agenda i.e. infrastructural development, expansion of construction for settlement to accommodate the ever growing population, utilization of fuel wood and charcoal as bio fuel have been contributing to green spaces depletion in Addis. Green spaces participatory management has been a problem. This requires studies to find solution for the Green space management problem. This research’s aim is to determine the green spaces status and green spaces participatory management that entails stakeholder organizations and the community in the ten sub-cities of Addis Ababa. The main research methods are Land cover change detection using remotely sensed satellite multi-temporal raster data image analysis, qualitative and quantitative data analysis. The unit of analysis of this case study is organization. The main technical approach applied was qualitative data analysis acquired through purposive (judgmental) sampled data later analyzed using Atlas ti. To supplement the study, a quantitative sampled single point in time (2014) cross-sectional surveyed data of 100 respondents from the ten sub-cities of Addis was analyzed using SPSS. For the analysis, especially oneway Anova statistical test was applied. The triangulated quantitative, qualitative, supplemented secondary and personal observations had yielded that Green spaces management in Addis Ababa has been dysfunctional. To confirm the dysfunctioning of Green space management, the change detection analysis using Remote Sensing had yielded that, a total of 1621 ha of Green spaces had already been destroyed. The principal mission of the stakeholder organizations is the maintenance of the Green spaces; the result was otherwise. The organizations mandated to maintain and develop Green spaces could not maintain the Green spaces, thus the status of Green space management has been dysfunctional. In the context of Addis Ababa city, the main causal factors for the dysfunction are, poor community and stakeholders involvement, especially dialog and linkage among those organization mandated to steward Green spaces, constraints in resources, such as skilled geospatial, arboreal and landscape professionals, absence of Tree Ordinances, poor digital facilities, lack of database and networking to generate and share spatial and non spatial information, poor law enforcement, laxity in surveillance and monitoring of green spaces through change detection studies and in situ observations including the development of new ones. Let alone the 41% or 22 000 ha, planned for the green frame, the total loss was found to be 30% and compared to the total area of the city (54 000 ha), merely 7% is covered with Green spaces. The remaining Green spaces are under vulnerability. Thus, to ameliorate the existing management, restructuring is imperative, merging the PSBB of MUDHC with BPCDA and the formation of an Integrated Green space Management that entails skilled arboreal, landscape architecture, geospatial professionals with a robust digital facility, networking with clearing house portal for synergizing bond and cooperation. The presence of Tree Ordinance, action oriented awareness to enhance communities participation better budget allocation would create a proper participatory Green space management in Addis, that enables Green spaces to sustainably render their eco-service to the city inhabitants.