Would you like to herd your own livestock in Africa, my friend?
Development and Climate Days: Arid Land Ecosystems and Climate Change - 11 December 2009 COPENHAGEN
Climate & Development Days at DR Byen (Dec. 11 – Session 2/Part 1): Arid Land Ecosystems
We arrived five WSC-SD’ers at DR Byen this morning, with three of us arriving fresh out of Göteborg this morning! After the first Session 1: Land, Water and Forests, the next session followed easily as it concerned arid lands ecosystems. This session was more focused on panel discussions.
Mr. Holmgren (FAO) first spoke on mitigation: explaining FAO’s work to be more technically oriented in nature than IFAD while related. A point made during the talk was that we are rarely hearing (considerable) mention in COP 15 talks and negotiations about agriculture, even if in the overwhelming part of the World, the method of agriculture is a high source of greenhouse gases (and use of water).
Link: Climate Change Impacts on Food Security in West Africa by René Gommes, FAO, April 2009 (14p).
Ced Hesse (IIED) then spoke on the need and role of land use issues. A major point during this track was that we need to not replace but to produce wealth by welcoming and contributing to economic growth through local variability, local experience, and local practices. Mr. Hesse’s talk specified his points to related to perception rather than science and reminded us finally of two dominant narratives:
- Tragedy of the commons (low productivity, environmentally destructive & uneconomic…). The point here being that the livestock holders would keep adding one animal too much on an area of pasture, for the land to stay in balance
- Pasture is uneconomic, romantic way of life, animals that are not marketed, etc.
On the contrary: Pastoralism holds several advantages over the alternative which is traditional agriculture or non-mobile pastoralism. The advantages of (especially) mobile pastoralism relate to environmental but ultimately just as much the survival aspects (and thus also social aspects) of livelihood: Rain, grass, nutritional peaks, animals breeding selectively, feeding selectively.
Arid Land Ecosystems: (organized by IFAD: Atiqur Rahman – at.rahman@ifad.org)
- Chairperson/facilitator: Rodney Cooke (IFAD) tbc
- Atiqur Rahman (IFAD) presents background paper and raises issues for discussion
- Panellists: Peter Holmgren (FAO), Ced Hesse (IIED), Nadim Khouri (IFAD), Alejandro Kilpatrick (GM), Cynthia Awour (CARE)
One interesting problem of privatization in some issues that it can lead the owner of the property to plunder it for whatever he can, for example if a fishery is sold to a private citizen it may be in his own best interest to deplete it immediately, take the profit, and run, rather than preserving it because he has a stake in it, as is generally the assumption for privitization.