The Kunzila integrated landscape management and WASH (ILMWA) project site is located in the Kunzila area, North Achefer Woreda of West Gojjam Zone, Amhara National Regional State of Ethiopia. The project site covers about 11,257 ha. It is located about 60km from Bahir Dar town on the Southwest of Lake Tana. The watershed is part of 6 kebeles (“Kebele” is the lowest administrative level of Ethiopia) but the watershed is designated following catchment flow. The watershed is made up of 12 micro-watersheds drained to a common outlet, called Lake Tana.
A total of 36,117 people live in the watershed. The population size in the small town of Kunzila and six rural kebeles disaggregated by sex is also collected. Kunzila town has 9,681 people (27%) and surrounding rural areas support 26,436 people, which is about 73% of the population. The female residents (18,514 ~ 51.3%) are higher than male residents (17,603 ~ 48.7%).

Regarding to land use types: type, composition, and coverage of various land use and land cover classes are one of the most useful, among others, information for sustainable land management. At present, the majority of the project area is characterized as rain feed cultivated landscape, which accounts 63% followed by grassland (11%), homestead (~9%), Shrub-bushland (~6%), forest (Natural and Planation) about 4.14%, Urban settlement (~1.82%), Bare land (~1.84%), wetlands (1.61%), Gulley and river courses (~1.42%) and others (~0.85%).

The main economic activities in the rural part of the watershed is obviously agricultural production: mixed crop-livestock production system. Households have on average 1.6 ha of land of which they produce crops on 1.34 ha of land. The main crops grown in the areas is maize, finger millet, teff (local cereal crop), guaya (grass pea), niger seed and pepper, in descending order of number of growers. In addition to the crop-livestock production, about 30% of the farmers also do extra off-farm and non-farm activities such as petty trade, daily laborer, handcraft, etc.

Access to road and other infrastructure in the project area is very low. The level of access to these infrastructure and services was measured in terms of the time it takes from home to these facilities in walking minute. While it takes longer time to reach most infrastructures such as all-weather road, urban market, health center for sample households. Across all watersheds, the survey result indicated that, on average, the longest waking distance from their home to all weather road takes 33.7 minutes in Upper Merfi micro-watershed, to rural market 73 minutes in Middle Merfi micro-watershed and 107.8 minutes to urban market, to heath center 110 minutes in Adina micro-watersheds and to main source of drinking water for human 14.6 minutes in Upper Merfi micro-watersheds

Water resource, a very critical demand of the community both for human and livestock uses. Lack of clean potable water and water interaction is reported to be one of the serious problems in the locality. It is neither accessible nor pure. The major sources of water for the community are hand pump, open well, protected water, spring water, unprotected water, piped water and rope dug well. This result shows that Most of the water sources are open and easily exposed to contamination. With regard to access to livestock water supply, the major sources of water for the livestock are from hand pump and open well. In the watershed, it was a common phenomenon that both human and livestock often share from the same water source, where the water source are poor quality. Otherwise, there is no significant economic activities on mining and fisheries despite a very big potential of the Lake Tana.