Researchers and partners critique framework to assess environmental impacts of livestock

For the past year, researchers from the International Livestock Research Institute, other research institutes and national partners have been working on a framework to carry out a ‘Comprehensive Livestock Environment Assessment for Improved Nutrition, a Secured Environment and Sustainable Development along Livestock Value Chains.’ On 30 and 31 October, the project team met in Kenya to review progress and the state of the framework.

See a presentation introducing the framework:

The framework has been tested in two districts in Tanzania – Morogoro and Lushoto – and local partners from the test sites joined the discussions. Indeed, a presentation of the framework with actual data and results from Lushoto was also presented.

The framework looks at four important dimensions – biodiversity, soil and land, water, and waste – seeking to provide decision support information for people working on dairy development. The idea is that a set of important sentinel data on each dimension can be collated, combined with community insights, and ‘plugged into’ the framework which will then generate a set of insights, reports and a sort of ‘traffic light’ indicators signalling potential danger areas for the environment.

Participants looked at each dimension in detail to suggest improvements; they also looked at the overall project from local and global perspectives, setting out next steps and actions to complete the framework so it can be released for wider testing.

Next steps and actions identified include:

Completing the framework (pathways, indicators, waste, visualization of results)
Addressing the nutrition dimensions
Refining and extending the scenarios (Tanga and Morogoro), with Maziwa Zaidi project
Completing the case study (Tanga and Morogoro)
Exploring ways to bring back and share the emerging results with Tanzania communities, nationally and locally.

In the longer term, the aim is to transform the framework into a user-friendly tool; building a community of trainers, devising Tanzania-specific roll-out that builds on the case study and partnerships already built, adapting and applying it in other value chains (aquaculture, pigs …), and extending the work to other countries and networks and partners.

See presentations from the project

See 2 recent posters:

Photos from the project

The project is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is implemented by ILRI, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the Stockholm Environmental Institute (SEI) and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).