Due to the lack of funds no preliminary workshop had been organized during the preparatory phase of the project and as this first one had therefore the following objectives: 1) To introduce Principal Investigators (PI) to each other; 2) To enhance shared understanding and commitment; 3) To agree on operational guidelines; 4) To determine the work plan for 2004 in detail. Eighteen people attended the workshop and eleven institutions were represented: ILRI (international Livestock Institute), FAO-LEAD; IWMI (International Water Management Institute); ASARECA (Animal Agricultural Research Network); NBS (Nile Basin Society-NGO); Makerere University (Uganda); EARO (Ethiopian Agricultural Research Organization); Water AIDS-ERHA (Ethiopian Rain Water Harvesting Association-NGO); CARE (NGO); MOST (Ministry of Science and Technology-Sudan); Higher Council for Environmental and Natural Resources (Sudan).
The main activities during the design of the project regarded the 1) Identification of water – livestock hotspots through the model and the synthesis of livestock and water interactions; 2) Development of a decision support tool for the identified hotspot area in the Nile Basin (GIS analysis; Development of adapted Livestock policy); 3) Development of a water component of the Livestock and Environment Toolbox; 4) Development of Policy dialogue and policy recommendations for identified hotspots; 5) Raising of new funding resources for the development of new activities within the project; 6) Organisation of an inception workshop in December 2004.
ILRI and IMWI will be responsible for the identification of hotspots in collaboration with LEAD as well as the selection of the communities even before hotspots are identified serving in this occasion more as case studies rather than social representations of a specific agro-ecological zone due. Close cooperation with local NGO’s, such as CARE will be required.
The main target groups of the project are croppers and pastoralists who will be reached through a participatory action research. The results of the workshops will be disseminated through the LEAD-Virtual Centre as well as IRLRI, IWMI and Nile Basin Society Websites while background papers will be provided by the particpiants themselves.
Finally, the monitoring and evaluation process will be done in part by the community - being this part of the self-assessment and learning cycle - and the other more focused on the project as a whole to monitor progress that leads to the planned outputs and outcomes.
The workshop on “Current Livestock and Environment Interactions in the Commonwealth
of Independent States And Mongolia” was organised by the Livestock, Environment
And Development (LEAD) Initiative under the project “Development of a Russian
Language Platform for Livestock, Environment and Development Issues” financed
by the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC). It was held in Issyk-Kul, Kyrgyz
Republic, 4 to 7 May 2003.
This project aims to provide a network of knowledge and knowledge exchange in order to assist in capacity building, provide baseline information and resource intelligence and increase awareness among key stakeholders in CIS countries and Mongolia of the complex interactions of human needs, animal production and the sustainability of the local natural resources.
The objectives of the workshop were:The workshop was attended by twenty two people from Armenia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. They represented different scientific, state and donor organisations mainly with background in animal production, environment with two experts on information management and dissemination. The participants were divided in four working groups for the different sessions. These were Eastern Europe, Russia plus Mongolia, Caucasus and Central Asia. Different methodologies were used at the workshop: “brainstorming” to detect existing problems in regions, group discussions and presentations of results of works and plenary discussions.
For more information please visit the Russian Language Platform at:Two workshops and a meeting at the FAOR-Mexico were held.
The first workshop was held in Mexico City, opened by M. Norman Bellino, FAO Representative. National level decision-makers from public sector, research centres, universities, and national co-ordinations of pig producers associations attended. The attendants shared and validated the concept of Area Wide Integration (AWI), that aims at re-connecting the intensive livestock production to the land. The need to work simultaneously at regulatory and awareness building levels was clearly stated.
The second workshop in La Piedad (Michuacán) allowed interaction with local governments (State and Municipalities), pig producers, local pig producers associations, research centres and universities, although the participation from municipalities' representatives was lower than expected. The relevance of the project, its proper timing, as well as the need for further activities were also clearly expressed in this workshop: if the analysis showed the high potential of the AWI concept in the area, it would now be required to actually implement it on selected municipalities. In particular, the pigs producers showed a strong interest in the project, some proposing their farms to implement pilot waste management systems.
On the basis of these discussions, a draft project document was prepared for submission as a TCP project. The objective of the project would be to implement the AWI concept in selected Municipalities included in the pilot project, and to assess the potentiality for replication in other Mexican states. This would be achieved through 1) Limited complementary baseline analysis, 2) implementation of waste management plans in pilot farms (partially funded by COFUPRO), 3) Proposition of regulations and advocacy at National, State, and Municipal level, and 4) dissemination of results and capacity building of administrations, producers and academics (also partially funded by COFUPRO).
The training was organised within the framework of the LEAD Spanish platform (implemented by CATIE). Thirty persons attended, mainly professionals (ministries and extension services), from nine countries in Latin America and the Caribbean: Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, México and Nicaragua.
The training focussed on the following issues: livestock, environment and production systems, silvopastoral systems; socio-economic aspects of silvopastures, decision support tools and the application of GIS for carbon sequestration. The discussion during the training highlighted the importance of dissemination of knowledge and methodologies for analysis of livestock production systems, the promote the adoption of silvopastoral technologies that contribute to alleviate rural poverty and produce important global and local environmental benefits and; the importance of the use of decision support tools as a mean to facilitate policy formulation.
A meeting at the Research Centre for Rural Economy (RCRE) in Beijing from 6 to 9 January 2003 was held to discuss the concept and the implementation plan of the Chinese Language Platform of the Virtual Research and Development Centre that is consistent with the overall LEAD project mandate and that takes into account the specific thematic focus areas identified by LEAD.
It was decided that the Chinese platform will concentrate initially on two main livestock and environment issues: animal waste problems in areas of high animal concentrations mainly in the peri-urban areas of Southeast of China and overgrazing and land degradation particularly in the Northwest of China.
The Chinese platform will be engaged in several electronic and non electronic activities in order to achieve its purposes of promoting the LEAD concept in its language area. In particular the Chinese Platform will engage in the development of decision support tools for policy makers and in its initial stages will concentrate on the adaptation and dissemination of existing tools particularly the development a Chinese version of the toolbox adapted local conditions.
The platform will moderate at least two electronic conferences durging the second half of the year. The first electronic conference will deal with general issues related to livestock and environment interactions. The second conference will focus on pollution from industrial production systems, entitled "how to meet the new national standards for pollutant and discharges from animal production in terms of technology management and policy". This will be carried out by using case studies in different provinces and will be directed at policy-makers and experts (farmers). Both conferences will be in Chinese.
The Chinese Language Platform will also facilitate collaborative research and development activities, such as case studies, research on the current pilot projects and further studies.
For more information please visit the preliminary site of the Chinese Language Platform at:The second Steering Committee for the SDC/LEAD study on watersheds in India which was held on 9 December 2002 in New Delhi. The main objectives of the meeting were to discuss and endorse the criteria for site selection, which was developed by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), to outline the progress made by the project to date, and the plan of action for the future.
The most important recommendations adopted by the Steering Committee were: