News Archive

Sustainable livestock systems

ILRI signs MoU with UNEP to collaborate in sustainable livestock and environmental development

A herd of cattle searching for water in an almost-dry riverbed (photo credit: ILRI/ Sonja Leitner). The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) that provides a framework for cooperation in...

ILRI News

International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists: A Mongolian proposal to the UN for 2026

Written by Cynthia Mugo (ILRI) and Lavinia Scudiero (GASL) . Milking yaks in the highlands of China (photo credit: Marc Foggin/iyrp.info) . In Aug 2019, the Mongolian Government began to petition the United Nations to declare an International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP) to increase...

Sustainable livestock systems

Climate-smart livestock systems program kicks off in Kenya’s pastoral rangelands

Like many other rangelands in East Africa, the South Rift rangelands in Kenya’s Kajiado County are vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In the Ol Kirmatian and Shompole group ranches in Kajiado, pastoralism is the predominant means of livestock production and over the years the pastoralists...

ILRI News

We need a new approach, or another coronavirus is inevitable

‘Until we start thinking of human and animal health as linked, another coronavirus is inevitable’, warns Jimmy Smith , the International Livestock Research Institute’s (ILRI) director general in an op-ed published 26 February in the Independent (paywalled, registration required). ‘The coronavirus (...

Sustainable livestock systems

A tool for all seasons: A ‘lean’ household survey system for ‘minimal effort, maximum information’ comes of age

Mark van Wijk, a senior scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), and his colleagues are excited to announce the first public release of a dataset generated by surveys of more than 13,000 households in 21 countries using a novel survey tool – the Rural Household Multi-...

Sustainable livestock systems

Changing landscapes call for new pathways in livestock development in Ethiopia’s Afar region

Livestock production is the main source of livelihood in the pastoral lands of Afar in northeastern Ethiopia. But the traditional livestock-keeping way of life there has been severely affected by a number of factors, including climate change, in recent years. Rainfall has become unpredictable, and...

Sustainable livestock systems

Role of pastoralist social networks in coping with crises: lessons from food aid interventions in Ethiopia

Originally published on the website of the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions and Markets. For many humanitarian and development actors, a household is presumed to represent the most appropriate social unit for aid delivery. However, pastoralist family groupings are far more complex...

Sustainable livestock systems

Healthy rangelands, healthy livestock and healthy people: A fully integrated One Health approach in pastoral Ethiopia

Originally published on Agrilinks . In recent years in the pastoral areas of developing countries, One Health is gaining increasing credibility and visibility as an approach that can combine interventions for both human and animals. Read this post on how the International Livestock Research...

ILRI News

Livestock in context: A plea for intellectual rigor and collegial disagreement

Photo credit: ©IFPRI/David Popham Lawrence Haddad, the executive director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and 2018 World Food Prize co-winner, gave two presentations at the International Tropical Agriculture Conference held 11-13 November in Brisbane, Australia. The first, titled Let...

ILRI News

The future of livestock in the developing world: myths, complexities and trade-offs

The future of livestock in the developing world was one of the principal themes at the third International Tropical Agriculture (TropAg) Conference held from 11-13 November 2019 in Brisbane, Australia. From left: Lindsay Falvey, Robyn Alders, Shirley Tarawali, Richard Eckard, Rebecca Doyle, Mario...

ILRI News

New York Global Landscapes Forum ‘Restore the Earth’ 2019

This blog was initially published on the International Land Coalition website by Fiona Flintan. The Rangelands Initiative of the International Land Coalition (ILC) is drawing attention to rangelands and drylands at the highest levels, in order to find solutions to the challenges faced by local...

Sustainable livestock systems

ILRI and FANRPAN test nutrition data collection in rural communities using pictography

This blog was written by Vincent Alulu and edited by Paul Karaimu and Judy Kimani. Have you heard that one must be literate to use the many data collection tools and applications that exist today? That the end user must be at least semi-literate to use such applications to monitor nutrition, and...