Douxchamps joins PLE West Africa team

Douxchamps: Working on the Volta River Basin

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.

 

Understanding the gender perspective in managing climate change-induced water stress

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

 

Keep your focus, PLE student advises

recently graduated with an Msc, now enrolled for PhD

Brian Owoyesigire, affiliated to the People Livestock and Environment theme, PLE, has graduated with an MSc. Animal Science from Makerere University, Uganda. He has immediately embarked on his PhD.

Born a pastoralist and a herdsman, he felt inclined to work with settled, semi-settled, non-settled pastoral communities of Kiruhura and Nakasongola in districts in Uganda. The main objective of the study entitled Assessment of factors affecting Livestock water productivity of rainfed pastoral production systems in the Nile River basin of Uganda, was to document the socio- economic factors affecting livestock water productivity (LWP), and generate indices to estimate LWP of rain fed pastoral production systems in the Nile River basin of Uganda.

The study revealed that LWP in the pastoral communities is affected by access and ownership of production resources such as land, water and livestock. Increased land degradation coupled with an increase in encroachment of thickets affected pasture availability for livestock hence reducing LWP. It recommended that well-managed settlement of pastoralists may foster higher livestock water productivity and by implication help reduce poverty in the Nile basin.

“The journey to achieve this was never easy; reading for course works, searching for literature and conducting field work were very challenging”, recalls Brian who said there were moments when he felt like giving it up. However, he continued pressing on.

“What kept me going was believing in God and knowing that it’s the victors who conquer. The motivation of seeing and having results from the study also kept me going”, he adds as he expresses great appreciation for good supervision from Dr Denis Mpairwe (Makerere) and support from Don Peden of ILRI.

My advice to those on the verge of giving up is simple; they will not get the degree to take home and will not contribute anything to bank of new knowledge and science. They should also know that no one can ever win without completing the race or the assignment. Please let them keep moving forward and focused no matter what.