Tag Archives: IAASTD

Climate change research by ILRI informs Stern Review on the economics of climate change

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Livestock systems analysts pinpoint communities most vulnerable to the double threat of climate change and severe poverty.
 
In July 2005, the British finance minister asked Sir Nicholas Stern to lead a major review of the economics of climate change, to understand more comprehensively the nature of the economic challenges and how they can be met in the UK and globally. Stern is a Head of the Government Economics Service and Adviser to the Government on the economics of climate change and development. The report calls for urgent action on climate change and a raft of new ‘green’ measures were announced at the launch of the report earlier this week.

Innovative analyses by agricultural systems analysts working at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and partner institutions were used in development of the seminal Stern Review on The Economics of Climate Change, published on 30 October 2006 and available online at  http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/Independent_Reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/sternreview_index.cfm)

A report ILRI published in August 2006 for the UK Department for International Development (DFID), Mapping Climate Vulnerability and Poverty in Africa, as well as an earlier study by two of the leading authors of the report, ‘The potential impacts of climate change on maize production in Africa and Latin America in 2055’ (written by Peter Jones and Philip Thornton and published in Global Environmental Change in 2003) are cited in part 2 of the Stern Review.

ILRI produced its 200-page Mapping Climate Variability report in partnership with the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) and The Energy Research Institute (TERI). Mapping Climate Vulnerability locates the African communities likely to be most vulnerable to the double threats of climate change and poverty. Regions likely to be hurt by climate change include the mixed arid-semiarid systems in the Sahel; arid-semiarid rangeland systems, the Great Lakes and Coastal regions of eastern Africa; and many drier zones of southern Africa.

Several other high-level assessments are using ILRI’s report and maps. These include a report of a UK Foresight project on Detection and Identification of Infectious Diseases in April 2006, the July 2006 UK White Paper on International Development, and an August 2006 review draft of the IAASTD Global Report (International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development).

These reports stress that farmers in many places will need to adapt to climate change, by investing in alternative crops and livestock, adjusting their management regimes, or by diversifying their income-generating activities (particularly off-farm activities). Raising awareness about the possible impact of climate change, and improving consultation between all levels of government and civil society, will be essential.

The Stern Review argues that climate change could devastate the global economy on a scale of the two world wars and the depression of the 1930s if left unchecked. Introducing the report by Nicholas Stern, the British Government also said Monday that the benefits of coordinated action around the world to tackle global warming will greatly outweigh any financial costs.

Sir Nicholas Stern, former Chief Economist at the World Bank, who oversaw production of the 700-page report commissioned by the British Government, concludes that ignoring climate change could lead to huge economic upheaval.

‘Our actions over the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century,’ he said. The report said global warming could result in melting glaciers, rising sea levels, falling crop yields, drinking water shortages, higher death tolls from malnutrition and heat stress, and outbreaks of malaria and dengue fever.

And richer nations must be prepared to pay more than poor ones to counter their higher emissions output, for example by green taxes or carbon trading schemes.

The poor countries will be hit earliest and hardest . . . It is only right that the rich countries should pay a little more,’ Stern said.
The report spells out key elements of future international frameworks, which include:

  • Technology cooperation: Informal co-ordination as well as formal agreements can boost the effectiveness of investments in innovation around the world.
  • Adaptation: The poorest countries are most vulnerable to climate change. It is essential that climate change be fully integrated into development policy, and that rich countries honour their pledges to increase support through overseas

    • development assistance. International funding should also support improved regional information on climate change impacts, and research into new crop varieties that will be more resilient to drought and flood.Key messages from the section of the Stern Review informed by ILRI’s systems research are provided below. For the full section or book, go to ILRI’s latest research findings on climate change, Mapping Climate Vulnerability and Poverty in Africa, published in July 2006, are found on ILRI’s website in full at: The conclusions are reproduced in a briefing of the same title found at:

Experts meet in Nairobi, project futuristic livestock scenarios for developing countries

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Group of 25 experts enters 'uncharted waters' in building futuristic livestock scenarios that force new thinking and new decisions.

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) hosted a group of 25 livestock and futures experts from around the world for two and a half days 13–15 February 2006 to do some non-crystal-ball-gazing. The experts constructed alternative scenarios of likely futures of livestock development in developing countries, paying particular attention to what will happen to poor people.

They got help from, Jerome Glenn, who is an expert in ‘futures research’ and director of a think tank called the Millennium Project, which has been running under the aegis of the American Council for the United Nations University since 1991.

Decision-makers in ILRI and FAO and other livestock research and development institutions are the target of the products of this meeting. The idea behind this work is to force serious, flexible thinking about alternative possibilities for the future and begin to come up with the right mix of strategic decisions that will allow people to adapt to the future. The process of doing this work can alter the way decision makers think about the future. That, says Glenn, may be the most important outcome of the meeting.

‘The germ of a future-oriented collective intelligence on livestock development for the poor was created here,’ Glenn said at the close of the meeting. ‘What we believe is possible for livestock development is “pretty poultry”’, he punned. ‘Here, for example, are just a few of the things that were not yet in the world in 1980: personal computers, the World Wide Web, cellular phones, AIDS, the European Union and the World Trade Organisation. The world has changed dramatically in the last 25 years. What is guaranteed is that we will have even more and faster changes in the future. This meeting was held to enlarge the capacity of stakeholders in livestock development to respond to good and bad events in future, including major shocks such as another tsunami, a war and or disease pandemics.’

Click here to read Jerome Glenn’s paper, Global Scenarios and Implications for Constructing Future Livestock Scenarios, January 2006, 68 pages.

‘We are entering uncharted waters’, said FAO Henning Steinfeld, to develop a platform for creating a better understanding of livestock futures.’

ILRI’s director general, Carlos Seré, said ILRI and FAO share concerns about finding the best ways to position livestock in a dynamic world for the benefit of the poor.

The products of this meeting include a wealth of information embedded in four plausible ‘storylines’ that the participants constructed for the future. The participants adapted the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment scenarios for the livestock sector and used two axis: one defining a future  environmentally reactive or proactive, the other defining a future globalized or fragmented. The scenarios the ILRI-FAO meeting participants developed ranged from a ‘Techno-Garden’, where technology is largely a good, benefiting many and bringing people together, to ‘Global Orchestration’, a world where consumers rule—but which consumers?, to an ‘Adaptive Mosaic’ future in which novel uses of IT connect livestock communities, to ‘Order from Strength; Weakness from Chaos’, a future in which where today’s international organizations are largely ineffective or have disappeared altogether, the world is fragmented and reactionary, and its every country for itself.

Summaries of the storylines will be produced by the end of March 2006. A longer report will be produced subsequently by ILRI and FAO. To receive a copy of the summaries or report, contact the meeting’s organizers, ILRI’s Ade Freeman or FAO’s Anni McLeod.

This livestock expert opinion is needed to feed into a major inter-governmental and consultative 3-year effort initiated by the World Bank called the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development. Involving 900 participants and 110 countries, the IAASTD is now collecting global and regional assessments of the state and needs of science and technology and is at the stage of preparing first drafts of results. Results of the ILRI-FAO meeting will also be used to inform annual program meetings of ILRI and the Animal Production and Health Division of FAO, where feedback from wider circles of livestock experts will be sought.

The aim of all this work, says ILRI livestock systems analyst Philip Thornton, is to ‘help build and drive a bandwagon rather than jumping on whatever bandwagon happens along. We need to be changing mindsets in a world where ten percent of the world’s population consumes ninety percent of the world’s resources. It is surely not impossible to have a more equitable world. We need to show people that livestock are a great development tool with which to do that.’

FAO Henning Steinfeld agrees. ‘The livestock sector must respond to the world as it is—and to how the sector is likely to be in the foreseeable future.’

If the world does not view livestock experts as long-term global visionaries, maybe it should take another look.