People Livestock and Environment

Florence Landsberg joined the PLE team as a visiting scientist in January. She is supporting the team in Nairobi on the Development of Prototype Tools to Support Resource Mapping, Land Use Development and Planning in Kenya’s Arid and Semi-Arid Lands. The project aims to produce learning materials for college and high school students to help them appreciate the use of mapping and data in long term planning and policy making.  This project builds on the successes of Nature’s Benefits in Kenya: An Atlas of Ecosystems and Human Well-Being, a project that saw the team produce an atlas that shows the location of natural resources in Kenya. 

Landsberg has been working as a Researcher at the World Resources Institute (WRI), a think-tank based in Washington DC. Over the last 5 years, she has had many opportunities to collaborate with ILRI, mainly on producing Nature’s Benefits in Kenya: An Atlas of Ecosystems and Human Well-Being (http://www.wri.org/publication/natures-benefits-in-kenya) and Mapping a Better Future: Spatial Analysis and Pro-Poor Livestock Strategies in Uganda (http://www.wri.org/publication/mapping-a-better-future-livestock). An Agronomy Engineer with a Masters degree in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems ( GIS).

Sabine joined PLE  in April 2011 as a postdoctoral fellow with IWMI and ILRI in the context of the ILRI-led CPWF Volta basin project on integrated management of rainwater for crop-livestock agro-ecosystems. Sabine will be based at IWMI office in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.  Her task will be to identify solutions that enhance environmental and livelihood benefits of integrated water, livestock and crop management strategies and mitigate negative effects, such as land and water degradation and conflicts.

Sabine is a soil scientist by training and she conducted her PhD thesis in the Group of Plant Nutrition at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. The overall project aimed at assessing the biophysical and socioeconomic trade-offs of introducing cover crop legumes as forage or as green manure in a smallholder crop-livestock system in Nicaragua, and was implemented in collaboration with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) as well as national partners. Sabine’s main focus was on plant environmental adaptation, symbiotic nitrogen fixation and soil nitrogen dynamics. Later on, she was involved in extension work when elaborating information material on legume use for the farmers.

The PLE West African team is part of the Reducing vulnerability of livestock-based livelihoods, ecosystem goods & services in pastoral and agropastoral Systems team.

Ms Carol Bosire, a research assistant with the People Livestock and Environment Theme is set to join the University of Twente, (Universiteit Twente in Dutch)The Netherlands, to study for a PhD. She will research on ‘livestock related water footprints’.

Caroline Bosire joined ILRI in June 2009 as a temporary staff, working with the People Livestock and Environment theme (PLE). In June 2010, she joined the improving markets theme as a research technician. She has been involved with the marketing of livestock project in the Kitengela Open Plains Programme (KOPP for PLE) and the East Africa Diary Development (EADD for Markets).

Reflecting on her time in ILRI, she says: “I have developed a better understanding of livestock issues and acquired the ability to integrate my ecological background to it. I initially studied conservation biology at my undergraduate and MSc and ILRI has widened my scope”.

Saidimu T Leeseto from the University of Southampton has joined the People Livestock and Environment team in Nairobi. A PhD candidate at the University’s school of Management, Saidimu is interested in climate risk (mainly droughts) focusing on the impact on social and economic well being.  He is currently collecting his doctoral research data in Samburu, Kenya. He is examining Risk Management focusing on the “The Role of Risk Management in Pastoral Policy Development and Poverty Reduction: A System Dynamics Approach”.
“PLE hosts scientists in my area of interest and in joining the department I will be able to interact with them at both the professional and personal level”, says Saidimu. He continues to say that a thorough literature synthesis also indicates that many studies have ILRI-PLE collaboration thus making it appropriate to join the team and explore areas of future collaboration.

The World Bank is changing and supporting development models that allow merging of different government and market interventions concerning agriculture, regional integration and policy issues. This is in reaction to the global economy which has become extremely volatile. The new approach is published in the article, ‘Africa’s future and the World Bank’s role in it’, released by World Bank. The article is quoted in ASARECA’s Policy Analysis and Advocacy Programme (PAAP) electronic newsletter Volume 14 Number 5 of 18 March 2011.

African countries have to tackle long-term development challenges such as undiversified production structures, low levels of human capital, poor service delivery and weak governance.
Through the years, more challenges are also coming into focus. Some of them include:
* Insufficient growth compared to increase in productive employment, especially for young Africans who enter the labor force every year.
* Evenly redistributed growth and productive employment would still remain out of reach for the chronically poor, who suffer from food insecurity and under-nourishment.
* African women, who are both contributors to and beneficiaries from development, still lack legal and property rights, and access to finance and modern business practices.
* Climate change, through its effects on water, threatens Africa’s agriculture.
* Non-traditional solutions must be found for the large number and persistence of fragile states which may be stuck in a low-level equilibrium “trap”.
* The co-existence of a massive infrastructure deficit and the large number of small countries in Africa signals the need for regional solutions.
* Fiscal austerity in developed countries, as well as criticism and political backlash against foreign aid, means that official development assistance may be constrained.

The bank is now seeing its role as a partner first, providing a platform on which development assistance and a country’s own resources can be more effectively used and using its knowledge assistance to nourish an evidence-based debate in countries on policy issues. Accountability is seen as a major constraint in Africa. The high level of corruption in many countries is a symptom of weak accountability. The current state of governance demonstrates negative and positive trends. This is one of the key things that the Bank will emphasize in its new approach. The media has been invited to play a major task of providing and disseminating information with which citizens can hold governments accountable.

The emergence of new development partners, the untapped potential of mobilizing domestic resources, as well as the rise in private capital flows to Africa, calls for a new approach. The bank is therefore seeking to build on news ways to approach governments. The strategy must be transformative for it to realize its’ vision. It will be implemented using the Bank’s traditional instruments – finance, knowledge and partnerships, which will be deployed differently depending on country circumstances.

Photo credit /ILRI/Mann

Amina Mohamed, a Kenyan national, has been named Assistant Secretary-General and Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). She becomes one of the most senior serving Kenyans in the UN. The announcement was made by the United Nations Secretary-General BAN Ki-moon.

Since 2008, Ms. Mohamed has been the Permanent Secretary and Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs of the Republic of Kenya where her leadership played a key role in the political, legal and constitutional reform process.

She has also served as the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Kenya to the UN in Geneva and was also the first woman to chair the General Council of the World Trade Organization, and the first African and first woman to be elected Chair of the Council for the International Organization for Migration.

ILRI works closely with the UNEP towards preserving and maintaining the integrity of the environment. Several research units within ILRI including the People Livestock and Environment Theme have livestock-environment interactions, biodiversity and climate adaptation at the top of their agenda.

Slightly edited from UNEP media statement.
Photo: UNEP

A gender-sensitive approach to water management adaptation planning is important if we are to develop strategies that will meet the needs of both men and women and be effective in the long term, says Dana Kaplan, UNEP Environmental Policy Graduate, In her paper “Adaptation to climate change induced water stress in the Nile River basin: A Gender perspective”. The paper is quoted in ASARECA’s Policy Analysis and Advocacy Programme (PAAP) electronic newsletter Volume 14 Number 3 of 18 February 2011.

She says it is important to take into account the diverse situations of men and women when planning demand-side management strategies, particularly as many of them require a change in behavior. Traditional gender roles prevail, with men and women having diverse roles and rights. These are important to take into account in water management and in defining adaptation strategies. Studies have shown that because of different gender roles and different adaptive capacities, men and women are impacted by climate change in different ways.

Different societal roles and capacities to adapt to the impacts of climate change mean that climate change-induced water stress will have different implications for men and women. They will, in turn, develop diverse mechanisms for coping with water stress, which are bound to have varying and significant effects on the livelihoods of men and women.

Understanding these diverse impacts and coping mechanisms is essential for developing effective, proactive adaptation strategies. Adaptation is the means of reducing vulnerability to climate-induced changes. It can occur either proactively, through concrete activities planned in anticipation of projected needs and changes; or reactively, as a mechanism of coping with a change in available resources. It can also occur on both individual and community levels.

Strategies will only be effective if the message is conveyed to everyone. Women have a much lower literacy rate and lower rate of participation in the workforce in Sudan and Egypt. Since information is often distributed in print or at the workplace, this needs to be taken into consideration when developing awareness strategies. Coping strategies that are beneficial for both men and women, have positive environmental impacts and are sustainable, should be formally recorded, supported, and popularised amongst other communities.

The Nile River Basin is one of the most critical shared water basins in Africa, shared by 10 countries, she states that the river basin faces increasing water stress due to a combination of the effects of climate change, high population growth and increasing development.

Photo Credit: Stevie Mann/ILRI

Twenty six German Students from the University of Kassel visited Kenya in an excursion, where they were hosted by ILRI on the 8th of March 2011. On hand to welcome them was Dr. Jan de Leeuw of PLE on behalf of ILRI management, who did all the required introductions.

The day kicked off on quite a high note. The students arrived early and were energized and eager to learn more from the presentations that were to be made. Speakers of the day included: Dr. Polly Ericksen, Dr. Mohammed Said, Phillip Osano, Jane Gitau, Dr. Rob Skilton, Brenda Wandera and Dr. Delia Grace.

A talk on climate change and pastoral systems by Polly Ericksen started off the discussions for the day. The students were very interactive, asking questions on every bit they did not understand. Other talks followed including one on conservancies in Kenya by Mohammed Said, Payment of ecosystem services in pastoral lands by Phillip Osano, Milk and Markets by Delia Grace, and Science Communication by Jane Gitau.

The science communication presentation was highly appreciated by the students because although communication is the core of every activity that we undertake, it is often a neglected area of pursuit.. Our willingness to communicate scientific vocabulary to people with little or no understanding about science greatly determines how interested they will be in the topic of discussion. It should not be one way because the greatest single stumbling block to real communication is the one-sided nature of speaking.

Two video presentations from Bio sciences Eastern and Central Africa (BECA) and Index Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI), broke the monotony of slide presentations. BECA, an initiative developed within the framework of Centers of Excellence for Science and Technology in Africa is hosted and managed by (ILRI). On the other hand, IBLI’s main objective is to help pastoral and agro-pastoral populations to manage drought-related livestock mortality. The project was pilot tested in Marsabit.