LEAD (Livestock Environment and Development) research and development on Livestock and Environment issues

http://www.virtualcentre.org/en/

Research and Development on Livestock and Environment issues is facilitated through guidance on project identification and implementation, and assistance with dissemination and scaling up of findings. The projects are implemented by partner’s institutions under the overall framework of LEAD and research and development is facilitated by regional language platforms supported by the LEAD Virtual Research & Development Centre.


		Lands classified as desert (length of growing period = 0), arid (lgp <90), and semi-arid (90<lgp<180) occupy approximately half of total emerged lands. These areas receive between 100 and 600 mm of rainfall annually, in a very erratic and inconsistent regime, the main feature of their “dryness” being the negative balance between the annual rainfall and evapo-transpiration. Many of world’s drylands are grazed natural pastures. The specificity of these rangelands lies in their lack of biomass stability. Drylands are widely spread over the globe, hosting an important share of the global population in fragile ecosystems. They therefore represent an important focus area for the LEAD Initiative.
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Piloting Livestock and Wildlife Integration in Communal Lands Adjacent to Protected Areas in Africa Identifies land-use planning and cost and benefit sharing mechanisms to improve integration of livestock, wildlife and crops on communal land, reducing conflicts and improving the livelihoods of livestock farmers. Country project: United Republic of Tanzania. Livestock and Environment interactions in buffer zones of protected areas Targeted to local communities, especially transhumants herders, the project identifies the relevant social and ecological indicators in buffer zones of protected areas in order to obtain the necessary elements for a participatory management of the area. Country project: Chad (available in French only) Decision Support to Livestock and Environment Policy Issues in Watershed Development Identifies better targeted institutional, socio-economic and technological interventions for the livestock component in watershed development. Country project: India. Pastoral Systems and Land Degradation in West Africa Reduces land degradation and erosion of biodiversity in the Sahel, leading to the inclusion of livestock environment interactions in the livestock policies. Country projects: Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, the Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, the Niger,Senegal (CILSS area - available in French only). Increasing water-use efficiency for food production through better livestock management This project has been proposed by ILRI as a component of the Challenge Program on Water and Food. It sets out to improve food security, reduce poverty and enhance agro-ecosystem health by managing livestock more effective overall use of water resources in the Nile basin. It addresses livestock-water interactions in rain fed pastoral, rain fed mixed crop-livestock, peri-urban and large scale irrigation systems all of which are important priorities in the Nile basin.


		Despite all the efforts to reduce the destruction of tropical forests and protect the natural habitats and the wildlife populations in all humid tropical areas, the beginning of the new century does not look more promising for the preservation of tropical rainforests and biodiversity. Classical approaches to conservation, such as attempts to preserve pristine habitats within national parks and other protected areas, have largely failed both in scale and in acknowledging the dynamics of the local communities. Driven by a variety of social and economic pressures, local settlers continue their expansion into the last remnants of native forests, and in many cases the prevailing land use patterns are both inefficient from an economic perspective and environmentally harmful.
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Integrated Silvopastoral Approaches to Ecosystem Management Aims to improve and develop sustainable management systems for degraded pastures in Latin America, thus reducing pressure on tropical rain forests. Country projects: Colombia, Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Predicting land use dynamics in the neotropics - the role of livestock in the deforestation processes Ranching-induced deforestation is one of the main causes of loss of some unique plant and animal species in the tropical rainforests of Central America and South America as well as carbon release in the atmosphere. To help decision-making address the problem it is therefore essential to dispose of a spatially specific information. As a first level of such information the LEAD programme seeks to identify “cattle ranching induced deforestation hot spots” through a spatial modelling approach.


		In many developing countries, livestock product consumption and production are increasing rapidly. Most of the production, however, is not generated by traditional production systems that characterised the region for centuries, but from industrial, large scale production of pigs and poultry, and to a certain extent, dairy. Large-scale, industrial production accounts for roughly 80 percent of the total production increase. Production relies almost exclusively on concentrate feed, often imported from elsewhere in the country or from abroad.
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Waste Management of Intensive Livestock Production Identifies policies, institutions and investments to achieve better spatial distribution of intensive livestock production units and to mitigate negative externalities of livestock production. Country projects: China, Mexico, Thailand and Viet Nam. Livestock Industrialization, Trade and Social-Health-Environment Impacts in Developing Countries The world is entering a period of rapid change in how animal products are produced, processed, consumed, and marketed. Increasingly the trends that have been observed in developed countries-scaling-up of production and increased concentration of large-scale operations with increased environmental problems are becoming apparent in the developing countries. Country projects: Brazil, India, the Philippines and Thailand. Protecting the environment from the impact of the growing industrialization of livestock production in East Asia The proposed project addresses one of the most significant and rapidly growing causes of land-based pollution of the South China Sea.