Policy discourses urging environmental rehabilitation, and rapid agricultural intensification for food self-sufficiency are firmly entrenched in Ethiopia. This paper examines the actor-networks and key policy spaces associated with the establishment of these discourses, taking natural resource management policies, and institutionalisation of the SG-2000 extension programme as case studies. An emergent, and potentially challenging, participatory natural resource management discourse is also identified. Contrasting the regions of Tigray and the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Region (SNNPR), the paper concludes by arguing that, with decentralisation, differences between regional administrative and political cultures are key to policy processes, affecting the degree to which central policies reflect local concerns.