Study of future of global food cites ways to advance and sustain livestock development

Posted on August 17, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

ILRI systems analyst Philip Thornton, participating in a media panel at the COP15 climate change conference in Copenhagen, December 2009 (photo by ILRI / P Kristjanson).

Publication this week of 21 papers in a special open-access edition of The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, part of a UK government Foresight study on the future of the global food industry, is causing a bit of a stir. The mass media are focusing on the wilder predictions, such as the possibility that we may be growing meat artificially, in vats, to feed the 9 billion-plus people expected to be alive at mid-century.

But more importantly, this major academic assessment of future global food supplies, led by John Beddington, the UK government chief scientist, argues that although big, the challenge of increasing global food supplies by as much as 70% in the next 40 years is not insurmountable and many of the papers are optimistic.

What is needed in addition to novel approaches to increasing food production, they say, are better uses of an array of low-tech to high-tech solutions, some already available, others needing refinement or a rethink for meeting the needs of the world's vast army of smallholder farmers.

As the Guardian article reports: 'Other papers suggest a radical rethink of global food production is needed to reduce its dependence on oil. Up to 70% of the energy needed to grow and supply food at present is fossil-fuel based which in turn contributes to climate change.

'"The need for action is urgent given the time required for investment in research to deliver new technologies to those that need them and for political and social change to take place," says the paper by Beddington.

'"Major advances can be achieved with the concerted application of current technologies and the importance of investing in research sooner rather than later to enable the food system to cope with challenges in the coming decades," says the paper led by the population biologist Charles Godfray of Oxford University.'

Regarding novel ideas on the horizon, in an interview with the Guardian, Philip Thornton, a scientist with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), based in Nairobi, and an author of one of the papers, said conventional animal breeding may be insufficient to meet the anticipated doubling of demand for dairy and meat products in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and to do so in sustainable ways. Thornton described two 'wild cards' that could transform global meat and milk production: 'One is artificial meat, which is made in a giant vat, and the other is nanotechnology, which is expected to become more important as a vehicle for delivering medication to livestock.'

But Thornton cautions against holding out hope for any one technology to solve our looming global food insecurity. He says we need to invest now in options across the whole gamut of agricultural development. Livestock development in poor countries, he says, 'will increasingly be affected by competition for natural resources, particularly land and water, as well as competition between food and feed, and by the need to operate in a carbon-constrained economy.' To help the world's 600 million small-scale farmers and herders increase their production and do so more efficiently, he says, will require continuing advances in the three pillars of livestock development–breeding, nutrition, and animal health.

The final Foresight report will be published later this year in advance of the UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico.

Read more at: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biology, Livestock production: recent trends, future prospects, by Philip Thornton.

The Guardian: Artificial meat? Food for thought by 2050, 16 August 2010

Livestock: ‘Polluters of the Planet’ or ‘Pathways out of Poverty’? A public debate

Posted on June 25, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Two development experts recently debated the 'public goods' and 'bads' of global livestock production. They debated the question, 'Should we eat less meat to increase food security', in a 'Spat' column in the current (June 2010) issue of People and Science, published by the British Science Association.

Arguing 'no' (with reservations) is John McDermott, a Canadian veterinary epidemiologist who serves the Africa-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) as Deputy Director General for Research. Arguing 'yes' (also with reservations) is Vicki Hird, a Senior Food Campaigner at Friends of the Earth, a UK-based environmental non-governmental organization.

The missions of both ILRI and Friends of the Earth have much in common. Both organizations, for example, are investigating ways to reduce climate change. And both want to manage natural resources in ways that conserve as much land, water, biodiversity and air as possible, with everyone getting a 'fair share' of those resources.

But when it comes to their views on livestock — as to whether cows, sheep, goats, pigs and other farm animals do more good than bad, or more bad than good, for people and their environments — each of these development experts sees livestock from a different perspective.

For Hird, who lives in Europe — where environmental concerns are major issues, and where the public embraces environmental causes and activism — livestock are largely 'polluters of the planet'.

For McDermott, who lives in East Africa — where people's greatest concerns are getting a job, putting food on the table and paying school and medical fees, a region where development concerns take centre stage — livestock represent 'pathways out of poverty'.

As one might expect, Hird takes a 'global' and 'environmental' view of the impacts of livestock production, focusing on the inhumane industrial 'factory farms' of industrialized countries, the over-consumption of fatty meat by the rich, and the rape of South American forests to make room for cattle, sheep and goat ranches or for growing soy to feed pigs in Europe. McDermott, also as one might expect, takes the perspective of the world's 450 million small farmers, who raise their animals on grass and crop wastes rather than grain, whose children don't yet eat enough meat, milk and eggs, and whose livelihoods depend directly on the natural resources they have at hand.

Both of these development experts, perhaps surprisingly, also agree on quite a lot when it comes to livestock. They agree that factory farming practices are becoming more and more unsustainable as well as inhumane; they agree that most people in rich countries would profit from eating less fatty meats; they agree that South America's forests should not be felled so that rich people can eat more pigmeat; and they agree that finding more sustainable as well as equitable ways of producing livestock is in the general public interest.

What the debate focuses on, then, is not so much what to do but how to do it. And, as we shall see, on how long that should take.

McDermott argues for giving small farmers 'incentives', for example, to redistribute livestock herds or to intensify their crop-plus-livestock farming systems in ways that make more efficient use of natural resources.

Hird argues for more regulation of the livestock industry in richer countries in areas such as farm subsidies and taxation, and for raising awareness of the major environmental, social and health problems that livestock systems can cause so as to change public (meat-eating) behaviour.

McDermott thinks our biggest job is 'to close the selective-evidence divide on both sides of the debate' by getting more evidence in key areas; some industrial practices, he points out, make 'very efficient' uses of environmental resources. To come up with equitable policies in the global livestock sector, McDermott argues, will require better assessments — and at much more local levels — of the differing socio-economic as well as environmental trade-offs of those policies. 'Before taking broad action', he says, 'we should use the best available knowledge to design and test interventions in pilot studies'.

Hird is impatient 'to wait for a perfect evidence base' before acting and says they have 'presented a Sustainable Livestock Bill in Parliament to kick start the dialogue on vital UK action'.

In brief, Hird appears most interested in quickly getting to 'less' livestock intensive production' and McDermott in developing long-term 'smarter' livestock intensive production'.

Let us know below what you think.

More . . . (People and Science Spat, June 2010)

Friends of the Earth

International Livestock Research Institute

In a new 2-minute filmed interview on the 'goods' and 'bads' of livestock by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), scientists Phil Thornton, of ILRI, and Andy Jarvis, of the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), in Colombia, give their views on whether giving up eating meat altogether would help to save the environment. They describe the importance of livestock to the livelihoods of one billion of the world's poor and caution that removing livestock from the environment would have its own effects. These scientists shared their views during the launch of a new initiative by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) called ‘Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security.’

Busy in Edinburgh: News from climate and systems scientist Phil Thornton

Posted on June 2, 2010 by Susan MacMillan

Philip Thornton, an agricultural systems analyst specializing in climate change and pro-poor livestock research for development issues, has worked for 14 years as a senior scientist and program leader at the Africa-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). For the last 8 years, he has served ILRI as a consultant from his home in Edinburgh.

This year, Thornton was appointed leader of a research theme of a new challenge program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) called 'Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security'. This CGIAR challenge program is likely this year to be transformed into one of the CGIAR's new 'mega programs'. His theme is titled 'Diagnosing vulnerability and analyzing opportunities'. Thornton will split his time equally between this new CGIAR climate change initiative and ILRI research on livestock pathways out of poverty.

As reported in the Winter 2009 issue of Agriculture for Development, the Tropical Agriculture Association last year bestowed on Thornton 'Development Agriculturist of the Year' Award 'in recognition of his contribution to international agricultural development through greater understanding of tropical agricultural systems'. The Association highlighted Thornton's prodigious work that has inform policies addressing climate change, land use and poverty alleviation.

In the current, Spring 2010, issue of Agriculture for Development, Thornton has published an article on 'Climate change and livestock keepers in developing countries: What are the prospects?'. The paper presents examples of possible impacts on livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa 'of long-term changes in climate, and then of possible impacts of short-term changes in climate variability.' For example, Thornton reports that research indicates that 'there are widespread parts of the continent that are currently classified as mixed crop-livestock rainfed arid-semiarid systems, in which cropping is possible but may well not be in 2050'.

'All in all', writes Thornton, 'the coming decades are likely to see substantial shifts in the patterns of African cropping and livestock keeping.' The paper concludes with a summary of options for dealing with these types of changes in future.

Examples: 'Helping livestock keepers understand and deal with current levels of climate variability can provide one entry point to the problems posed by increasing variability in the future and to the options that may be needed to deal with it. For example, weather information can be used to assist rural communities in managing the risks associated with rainfall variability, and can also feed into livestock insurance schemes that are weather-indexed: policyholders are paid in response to trigger events such as abnormal rainfall or high local animal mortality rates. An index insurance scheme based on satellite imagery is currently being piloted in several areas of drought-prone northern Kenya. It may also be possible for livestock keepers to change the mix of livestock species and/or breeds that they keep, a strategy that has been practised in the past by some pastoralists in East and West Africa, for example. Longer term approaches to adaptation are also needed.'

Thornton is also an Honourary Fellow in the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Edinburgh and Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal Agricultural Systems.

Agricultural research ‘masterplan’ unveiled

Posted on December 11, 2009 by ILRIComms

[COPENHAGEN] A “masterplan” for agricultural research and technology transfer was unveiled at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen today by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the world’s largest alliance of agricultural scientists.

The 45-page strategy calls for, on the one hand, action that harnesses multiple advances that the group says are waiting to be rolled out. The second strand is to boost research into longer-term solutions.

The report thus calls for an intensive effort to “speed the development and dissemination of dozens of existing improved technologies”, including hardier crop varieties and more efficient ways to manage water, trees, soils, livestock, fish and forests. These have emerged from more than 30 years of research, the group says.

“Turning this wealth of knowledge into action will create immediate benefits, bolstering food security and adapting agriculture to climate change impacts in the near term, while mitigating future impacts through reduced greenhouse gas emissions,” said Thomas Rosswall, chair of the CGIAR Challenge program on climate change, agriculture and food security.

“A quick response now will also buy us time to develop the more potent climate change solutions that will be needed 10 years from now.”

CGIAR experts also argued that the proposed adaptation fund “to enable developing countries to cope with the impacts of climate change“ should cover agriculture.

“Agriculture is part of the [climate change] problem and part of the solution,” said Rosswall.

Agriculture contributes to a third of the total global greenhouse gas emissions but is also highly vulnerable to changes in temperature and rainfall, and extreme weather events.

An International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) analysis published this month (December) predicts a 10–40 per cent decline in crop yields by 2050. Food prices are projected to rise by 30–70 per cent by 2050 even without climate change and by an additional 30–100 percent due to the impact of climate change.

The CGIAR report highlighted the use of computer modelling to inform decisions about difficult trade-offs, such as those between environmental impacts and socioeconomic benefits in the global livestock sector.

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi, for example, is modelling ways of making crop and livestock production more profitable without depleting natural resources, said Philip Thornton, senior scientist at ILRI.

It has prepared maps indicating where the environmental pressures of such production are most intense.

Computer simulations are also helping to explore the potential of crop substitution, for example, replacing beans, a major crop that is declining in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, with the more drought-tolerant cassava.

What a 5-degree world will look like in Africa

Posted on October 28, 2009 by ILRIComms

At the end of September 2009, Phil Thornton, agricultural systems analyst at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), made a presentation at an international climate conference in Oxford called ‘Four Degrees & Beyond.’ The research he presented was conducted with Thornton’s long-term colleague, Peter Jones, of Waen Associates (UK).

Thornton and Jones have looked at the probable impacts of climate change on agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa and what needs to be done about this. Africa’s population will grow from 0.8 billion today to some 1.8 billion by 2050. Already, over 40% of Africans live in urban areas, and this urbanization will only increase in future, greatly increasing the continent’s need for food to feed all its urban dwellers.

The prognosis for agriculture is mixed in Africa, where yields per hectare have already stagnated. Climate change is critically important to Africa because the gross domestic product and levels of rainfall are highly correlated here. Any change in rainfall and rainfall variability is likely to bring associated economic change. Given all this, the authors asked themselves if ‘it can all be held together’ in the future.

Several research studies indicate that yields of major cereals will be reduced by 10 to 30% to mid-century and beyond, although yields will vary widely depending on the crop grown and the location of the farming system. Regarding the impacts of a temperature increase of 5-degrees centigrade on growing seasons and crop yields, southern Africa is likely to experience 20% or more losses in length of growing periods. Thornton said we can expect under a 5 degree C increase many more ‘failed seasons’ in the 2090s, especially in southern Africa, the northern Sahel and the Horn of Africa. Most of rainfed agriculture in regions south of the Zambezi River is likely to become unviable and in much of East Africa, maize yields could fall by 26% and beans by 54%.

Prognosis
A 5-degree centigrade temperature increase will thus increase crop failure in much of sub-Saharan Africa, which will then require massive increases in intensive cropping in the highlands to feed all the people living in urban areas. In more marginal lands, many farmers will be forced to make radical transitions in their livelihoods, turning from cropping to livestock keeping, for example, or abandoning agriculture altogether.

The prognosis for a +5°C SSA
Croppers and livestock keepers have been highly adaptable to short- and long-term variations in climate. But the changes in a plus five-degree world would be way beyond experience. Number of people at risk from hunger has never been higher: 300 million in 1990, 700 million in 2007, and close to 1 billion in 2010 (FAO).

What needs to be done
We need to assess the limits of adaptation to climate change in Africa. And we need to develop comprehensive tools with which to analyze trade offs between, for example, economic growth and food security. We need to build on the adaptive capacity of Africa’s croppers and livestock keepers, increase our investments in agricultural and livestock development, and get the development paradigm for Africa right—one that builds on local, indigenous skills, knowledge and culture.

Mostly what we need to do is to avoid, at all costs, a 5-degree plus world.

Do higher meat and milk prices adversely affect poor people?

Posted on March 4, 2008 by ILRIComms

Based on new projections for global food demand, higher prices mean that a larger number of poor consumers will have reduced access to food. This is a key finding in the latest issue of id21 insights.

The February 2008 issue of id21 insights focuses on ‘The growing demand for livestock’. Population and economic growth in developing countries are increasing the demand for food, particularly meat and milk. The growth in food consumption is shifting from industrial to developing countries. As global demand for meat and milk increases, many policies will focus on promoting international trade in livestock and livestock products.

This insight paper contains eight short articles exploring who will benefit from the expanding global markets.

In the article, ‘Do higher milk and meat prices adversely affect poor people?’ division director and policy economist at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Mark Rosegrant and ILRI agricultural systems analyst, Phil Thornton, explore what rising prices will mean for the poor.

One of their key findings is that a larger number of poor consumers will have reduced access to food. Poor livestock keepers will be hit hard and higher cereal prices will impact negatively on all poor people. This is based on new projections for global food demand, produced by IFPRI’s ‘IMPACT’ model and linked to ILRI’s livestock spatial location-allocation model (SLAM).

Thornton warns ‘while there are considerable opportunities for livestock growth, there is a danger that smallholder producers and other poor livestock-dependent people may not be able to take advantage because their access to markets and technologies is constrained.’
The expected growth in demand and supply of livestock-related products will mean profound changes for animal production systems. While there are many opportunities, there are also risks that need to be considered and managed:

• If appropriate food standards and regulatory systems are not implemented, expanded market activity and a rise in exports of livestock and livestock products could threaten food safety and increase the risk of animal disease transmission.
• Declining resource availability could lead to the degradation of land and water resources in livestock systems, as well as loss of animal genetic resources/indigenous livestock diversity.
• In grassland-based systems, grazing intensity is projected to increase by 50% globally as early as 2030, which may result in resource degradation in places.

Pro-poor international trade policies needed

Rosegrant and Thornton conclude that long-term policies will be necessary to ensure that the development of livestock systems plays a role in reducing poverty, as well as mitigating negative environmental impacts, encouraging income equality and supporting progress towards reducing malnutrition.

‘People are increasingly recognising the need to promote pro-poor international trade. We need policies to ensure that small-scale farmers can produce safe livestock products and sell them in appropriate markets. Unfortunately, there are not many examples of this happening in practice’ concludes Rosegrant.

Download id21 insights 72: http://www.eldis.org/go/topics/insights/

Endgame

Posted on June 11, 2007 by ILRIComms

When is it the ‘end of the game’ for livestock keepers wresting a living from diminishing natural resources? A new study suggests when adaptations to increasing external stresses are no longer viable for livestock peoples and their lands.

Sub-Saharan Africa has been called the food crisis epicentre of the world. Global change is likely to add to the burdens of many millions of poor and vulnerable people on the continent. Equipping policymakers and donor agents with tools and information with which to identify the ‘bounds of the possible’ in natural resource use is likely to become crucial in the fight to help hundreds of millions of Africans dependent on diminishing natural resources escape poverty, hunger and environmental degradation.

The business of scientists conducting livestock research for development is to help farmers and herders protect and grow their ‘living assets’ so that small-scale livestock enterprises become sustainable pathways out of poverty. That is what a group of scientists set out to do in an ‘integrated assessment’ of coping strategies in livestock dependent households in East and Southern Africa. Integrated assessment combines models to test the likely impacts of different future scenarios on ecological functioning as well as household well-being.

The authors of this new study entitled ‘Coping strategies in livestock-dependent households in East and Southern Africa’, recently published in the scientific journal Human Ecology, synthesized results of work undertaken in four livestock systems in eastern and southern Africa: pastoralist communities in northern Tanzania, agro-pastoralists in southern Kenya, communal and commercial ranchers in South Africa, and mixed crop-and-livestock farmers in western Kenya.

The authors of the synthesis are scientists at the Africa-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Colorado State University’s Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory and Department of Anthropology, and the Eastern and Central Africa Programme for Agricultural Policy Analysis. The results of their study confirm that household capacity to adapt to increasing external stresses is governed by the flexibility the householders are able to exercise in livelihood options. Such options include intensifying one’s crop and animal production, diversifying the kinds of plant and animal products one produces on the farm, and working for wages in a job found off the farm. The researchers quantified the likely impacts on households and ecosystems of people taking up such options. The results are being used to better target interventions designed to help poor people manage increasing change and risk.

The four case studies employed in this synthesis, all conducted since the late 1990s, looked at increasing risks and external stresses in the pastoral, agro-pastoral and mixed crop-livestock agricultural systems of eastern and southern Africa. All four studies focussed on households made particularly vulnerable not only because they rely on diminishing ecosystems goods and services (e.g., land, water, forages) for a large part of their livelihoods but also because they face volatile changes driven or characterized by increasing (1) population growth; (2) in-migrations and fragmentations of pastoral lands; (3) climate change and variability; and (4) increasing/changing consumption of meat, milk and other livestock foods and (5) decreasing land size.

In each case study, the researchers worked directly with farmers and pastoralists in collecting data with which to build and calibrate appropriate household models, in setting up and testing a wide variety of scenarios, and in visualizing and assessing the likely impacts of interventions on the various system components. Discussions by stakeholders and researchers of results of running the models helped disclose other scenarios to investigate and identify options that were subsequently tested by the farmers.

This paper synthesizes lessons learnt from these case studies and outlines future research needs.

Conclusions

The mixture of fieldwork and integrated assessment modelling employed in this synthesis indicate that having different options available with which to manage natural resources can help households at least partially overcome the effects of increasing stresses to the system caused by population growth, changes in climate and weather variability and land fragmentation. But there are also costs to implementing these options: costs to natural resources, to other stakeholder groups and to household incomes. Furthermore, households can offset increased stresses through natural resource management only up to a point. With the tools employed in these assessments, scenarios can be set up and run that go well beyond these thresholds, to points where offsetting is no longer possible through internal manipulation of the system.

The good news
The four case studies used in this synthesis indicate that households can partially offset the impacts of external stresses by increasing the size of cultivated plots (as pastoral communities are doing in northern Tanzania and agro-pastoral communities in southern Kenya), by diversifying their activities into other agricultural and nonagricultural activities (agro-pastoral communities in southern Kenya), by using climate forecasts to make stocking decisions (communal and commercial ranchers in drought-prone regions of South Africa), and by intensifying and/or diversifying agricultural production (mixed crop-livestock farmers in western Kenya).

The bad news
Although households are able to offset impacts of increasing stress to some degree through diversification and intensification, implementing these options generates other potential, and actual costs. ‘What this simply means’, says ILRI’s Philip Thornton, lead author of the synthesis, ‘is that there are thresholds in these systems beyond which it is unlikely that management options alone can offset increasing system stresses.’

Thornton says the integrated assessment framework is useful in identifying not only what is desirable, in terms of possible impacts on different groups of stakeholders, but also what is feasible. ‘Given increasing system stresses,’ he says, ‘the point may well be reached at which natural-resource-based livelihood options are simply no longer feasible.’

Indeed, a key use of integrated assessment is identifying situations where households are unlikely to be able to sustain current livelihood options based on exploitation of natural resources. In such cases, appropriate livelihood options will likely involve making radical rather than incremental shifts in agricultural and/or livestock productivity, finding off-farm employment, and exiting farming enterprises altogether.

The news for policymakers
All four case studies analyzed in this synthesis have substantial implications for policymaking. Among these are the following:

The new options that poor households need to consider when adapting to change do not impinge merely on one or two economic sectors but rather strike at the heart of national policies for food security, self-sufficiency and the role of agriculture in economic growth and development in general (see Ellis 2004). Such policy debates can be enhanced by research.
Policymakers can profit from demanding, supporting and utilizing broad integrated assessments that apply new approaches to development. Such approaches include those based on the principles of ‘integrated natural resources management’ (see Sayer and Campbell 2001) and ‘adaptive resource management’ and ‘adaptive governance of resilience’ (see Folke et al. 2002 and Walker et al. 2004).
Poorer people often have the most to gain from implementing options that increase household ability to cope with change. Investments in developing and disseminating coping strategies and risk management options thus can help alleviate poverty in substantial ways.
Householders’ objectives and their attitudes about, and access to, natural resources vary greatly. The type of household model best suited to each case will thus often differ, requiring that integrated assessments be done on a case-by-case basis. As Thornton says, ‘So-called “recommendation domains” for targeting technology and policy interventions are probably smaller than we thought.’ Acknowledging that, contrary to conventional wisdom, research impacts cannot easily be generalized across large areas has considerable implications for the way in which research for development can most effectively be carried out.
We need to employ a dynamic framework to assess the ecological impacts of changes, together with their major feedbacks to livelihood systems, over the medium term at the least. There are lags and dampers in the system that need to be elucidated in any even partially integrated assessment.
The assessment framework has to allow the quantification of major trade-offs so that decision-makers and stakeholders can visualize impacts of different actions on different parties.
Although the integrated assessments employed in these case studies have limitations that should be addressed in further work, such assessments have a key role to play not only in quantifying trade-offs but also in identifying what is both desirable and feasible in highly complex systems. Integrated assessments, in other words, can help establish the outer limits within which agricultural research can reasonably be expected to contribute to improving and sustaining livelihoods in given situations.

Citation:
Thornton, P.K., R.B. Boone, K.A. Galvin, S.B. BurnSilver, M.M. Waithaka, J. Kuyiah, S. Karanja, E. Gonzalez-Estrada, and M. Herrero. Coping strategies in livestock-dependent households in East and Southern Africa: A synthesis of four case studies. Human Ecology. Vol. Online first (2007)

Download the paper: http://www.springerlink.com/content/75368853th35r755/

References:
Ellis, F. (2004). Occupational diversification in developing countries and the implications for agricultural policy. Programme of Advisory and Support Services to DFID (PASS) Project No. WB0207. Online at:
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/25/9/36562879.pdf

Folke, C., Carpenter, S., Elmqvist, T., Gunderson, L., Holling, C.S., Walker, B., Bengtsson, J., Berkes, F., Colding, J., Danell, K., Falkenmark, M., Gordon, L., Kasperson, R., Kautsky, N., Kinzig, A., Levin, S., Mäler, K.-G., Moberg, F., Ohlsson, L., Olsson, P., Ostrom, E., Reid, W., Rockström, J., Savenije, H., and Svedin, U. (2002). Resilience and sustainable development: building adaptive capacity in a world of transformation. Scientific background paper on resilience for the process of The World Summit on Sustainable Development on behalf of The Environmental Advisory Council to the Swedish Government. Ministry of the Environment, Stockholm, Sweden. Online at:
http://www.sou.gov.se/mvb/pdf/resiliens.pdf

Sayer, J. A., and Campbell, B. (2001). Research to integrate productivity enhancement, environmental protection, and human development. Conservation Ecology 5(2): 32. Online at:
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol5/iss2/art32/

Walker, B., Holling, C. S., Carpenter, S. R., and Kinzig, A. (2004). Resilience, Adaptability and Transformability in Social-ecological Systems. Ecology and Science 9 (2): 5. Online at:
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art5/

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

Posted on November 8, 2006 by ILRIComms

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:

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