Natural Resources and Land Use
Ethiopia has small reserves of gold, platinum, copper, potash, and natural gas. It has extensive hydropower potential.
Of the total land area, about 20 percent is under cultivation, although the amount of potentially arable land is larger. Only about 10 to 15 percent of the land area is presently covered by forest as a result of rapid deforestation during the last 30 years. Of the remainder, a large portion is used as pasturage. Some land is too rugged, dry, or infertile for agriculture or any other use.
Read more about this topic: Geography Of Ethiopia
Famous quotes containing the words natural, resources and/or land:
“Numerous studies have shown that those adults who feel the most frustrated by children—and the least competent as parents—usually have one thing in common.... They don’t know what behaviors are normal and appropriate for children at different stages of development. This leads them to misinterpret their children’s natural behaviors and to have inappropriate expectations, both for their children and themselves.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“I always put these pert jackanapeses out of countenance by looking extremely grave when they expect that I should laugh at their pleasantries; and by saying Well, and so?—as if they had not done, and that the sting were still to come. This disconcerts them, as they have no resources in themselves, and have but one set of jokes to live upon.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The windy springs and the blazing summers, one after another, had enriched and mellowed that flat tableland; all the human effort that had gone into it was coming back in long, sweeping lines of fertility. The changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching the growth of a great man or of a great idea. I recognized every tree and sandbank and rugged draw. I found that I remembered the conformation of the land as one remembers the modelling of human faces.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)