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Livestock and wildlife in the environment - diversity in pastoral ecosystems of East Africa







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    The influence of government policies on livestock production and the environment in West Asia and North Africa (WANA) 1998
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    The paper reviews the dynamics of change in the WANA region over the last forty years, with a particular focus on their impact on agricultural policy, the livestock sector, and the environment in the Mashreq and Maghreb (M&M) countries of the region, for which recent information is available from an ongoing project. This project, which is supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development (AFESD), involves two intern ational research centers - the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), in close collaboration with national biological and social scientists from those eight countries. 1 Its principal goal is to find ways of reconciling growth, poverty alleviation, and sustainable natural resource management in the low rainfall farming areas of those countries with mean annual precipitation (MAP) below 400 mm, the ste ppe rangelands with MAP below 200 mm, and the upland watersheds. These zones which cover a huge area, including a significant share of the arable land, and virtually all of the natural grazings in those countries (Table 1), are at high risk from climatic hazards, and represent the main locus of rural poverty. Livestock, particularly small ruminants, have a pivotal social and economic role in land use, farming systems, and employment there, and are the mainstay of family income and savings f rom agriculture. Livestock also contribute significantly to the national economies, representing between 30 percent and 35 percent of agricultural GDP in the eight countries. Nevertheless, their governments, faced with large food and feed imports to meet the needs of rapidly growing populations, have given priority in research and investment policies to the higher rainfall areas, and particularly to the expansion of irrigation. Support to agriculture in the low rainfall areas has been mainl y aimed at mitigating the impact on the ruminant livestock sector of the frequent droughts which are endemic to the dominant semi-arid winter rainfall Mediterranean climate there. These drought relief policies, which have been largely of an ad hoc reactive nature, have created social and economic dependencies among people in the low rainfall areas; which are proving financially costly to governments, and difficult to escape from. Together with broader sector and national policies, they have encouraged escalation of animal numbers and had perverse effects on the natural environment. This paper reviews the factors which have created this situation, and suggests measures to restore sustainable management of livestock based farming systems in these low rainfall environments, while alleviating poverty.
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    Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment. Geographic distribution and environmental characterization of livestock production systems in Eastern Africa 2010
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    The central role played by livestock in the livelihoods of rural households in the developing world is seldom fully appreciated by policy makers, development agencies and donors. Knowledge gaps in the geographic distribution and environmental determinants of farming systems, especially if viewed through the livestock lens, compound this problem. We have produced a map of pastoral, agro-pastoral and mixed farming systems across Eastern Africa, by analysing datasets collected in the framework of l ivelihood analysis. Input data were gathered between 2000 and 2007 by various emergency and development agencies for Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda and parts of Ethiopia and Sudan. A quantitative definition of the production systems is adopted, based on the ratio of livestock- to cropderived income. The resulting livelihood-based map of livestock production systems was compared through correspondence analysis to an alternative livestock production systems map, produced independently f rom environmental data. Convergence between the two mapping approaches was evident. The geographic distribution of the livestock production systems was also modelled using multivariate analysis of remotely sensed and other geospatial datasets. Models show high statistical accuracy, and were thus used to fill the gaps in the observed distribution of livestock production systems. Finally, selected environmental factors underpinning the systems (agro-climatology, human and livestock populations and land cover) were analysed in detail, enabling the livestock production systems to be characterized in terms of them. The regional scope of the map, as well as its direct link with a vast amount of livelihood information, render it a valuable tool for a range of development and research applications, including those related to global change.
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    Project on Livestock Industrialization, Trade and Social-Health-Environment Impacts in Developing Countries
    Policy, Technical, and Environmental Determinants and Implications of the Scaling-Up of Livestock Production in Four Fast-Growing Developing Countries: A Synthesis
    2003
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