Prospects for Livestock-Based Livelihoods in Africa's Drylands

Haan, Cornelis de

doi:10.1596/978-1-4648-0836-4

Cited by 25 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 40 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Official reports show that the number of livestock remained almost constant ever since the conservation area was established. Tropical Livestock Units (TLUs) per capita declined from 11.6 in 1959 to 2.3 in 2017 (URT, 2019: xii), a number that is far below the estimated 8.0 TLU minimum needed to sustain pastoralist livelihoods (Haan, 2016). Key government officials I interviewed argue that the Maasai are changing their ways of living; such as permanent settlements, new food habits and education among other changes.…”

Section: The Discursive Production Of Scarcity and Traditionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making land grabbable: Stealthy dispossessions by conservation in Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania

Weldemichel

2021

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper seeks to answer the question: how does land become grabbable and local people relocatable? It focuses on the historical and current conditions of land tenure that enable land grabbing. While recognising the important contributions thus far made by the critical literature on land grabbing, this paper moves forward towards understanding specific processes that befall before land is grabbed and its original users relocated. Based on an empirical analysis of policy and practices of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania, the paper proposes that land grabbing, particularly in the context of conservation in rural Africa, is not an instantaneous phenomenon and does not happen in a vacuum. It is a result of long-term structural marginalisation of rural land users that produces scarcity and the deterioration of life conditions, which make people relocatable and land grabbing justifiable. Local people either relocate themselves because they could not make a living due to systematic disinvestments on basic social services or life is made unbearable through restrictions imposed on their production practices to make “voluntary” relocation possible. The paper highlights the need to focus on the stealthy dispossessions in addition to major events of grabbing as starting points of analysis. Insight from this study can be useful in analysing other cases of land grabbing where large swathes of ostensibly empty land are made available for investment.

show abstract

Section: The Discursive Production Of Scarcity and Traditionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making land grabbable: Stealthy dispossessions by conservation in Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania

Weldemichel

2021

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…About 40 percent of the rural extreme poor live in forests and savannahs (FAO, 2018). About 85 percent of pastoralists and 75 percent of agro-pastoralists live below the extreme poverty line (De Haan, 2016). Farming systems, farms and farmers are incredibly diverse (Giller et al, 2020).…”

Section: Improving Livelihoods Of the Rural Poormentioning

confidence: 99%

Do not transform food systems on the backs of the rural poor

2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Even prior to COVID, there was a considerable push for food system transformation to achieve better nutrition and health as well as environmental and climate change outcomes. Recent years have seen a large number of high visibility and influential publications on food system transformation. Literature is emerging questioning the utility and scope of these analyses, particularly in terms of trade-offs among multiple objectives. We build on these critiques of emerging food system transformation approaches in our review of four recent and influential publications from the EAT-Lancet Commission, the IPCC, the World Resources Institute and the Food and Land Use Coalition. We argue that a major problem is the lack of explicit inclusion of the livelihoods of poor rural people in their modeling approaches and insufficient measures to ensure that the nature and scale of the envisioned changes will improve these livelihoods. Unless livelihoods and socioeconomic inclusion more broadly are brought to the center of such approaches, we very much risk transforming food systems to reach environmental and nutritional objectives on the backs of the rural poor.

show abstract

“…Agro-pastoralism's capacity to absorb shocks and adapt to external drivers has eroded since the 1970s (Bonnet and Guibert 2012;De Haan 2016;FAO 2018;Touré et al 2012). Growing social differentiation and inequalities have been reported within the pastoralists communities as a result of increasing poverty through loss of assets (livestock above all) and reduced mobility (Bonnet and Guibert 2012;De Haan 2016;FAO 2018;Touré et al 2012;Catley and Aklilu 2013;. Poor and very poor households depend on selling labour to wealthier groups or on in-kind loans of these groups.…”

Section: Equity and Inclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Mobility of livestock and people has always been the adequate response to cope with erratic rainfall. Another response to droughts is selling of livestock, albeit at unfavorable prices (Bonnet and Guibert 2012;De Haan 2016;de Leeuw et al 2020;FAO 2018;Inter-réseaux 2017;Hesse et al 2013;Krätli et al 2013).…”

Section: Risks and Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

West African food system resilience

Piters¹,

Nelen²,

Wennink³

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background and understanding food systems resilience Regional drivers of West Africa's food systems Regional organisations Agro-pastoralism-based food systems Grains-and-legumes-based food system Rice-and-horticulture-based food systems Coastal maritime fisheries food system Tropical mixed tree and food crops systems Toward enhanced resilience of West African food systems Background and understanding Regional drivers Regional organisations Agro-pastoralism-based Grains-and-legumes-based Rice-and-horticulture Coastal maritime fisheries Tropical mixed tree and food crops systems Toward enhanced resiliencePreface COVID-19 is an extreme event that we will remember for a lifetime. But it is by no means the only shock of our time that puts global food security under pressure. Climate change, the increase in pandemics due to animal disease transfer and biodiversity loss will further increase pressure on existing food systems. Resilient, sustainable food systems, striking a balance between social, economic and environmental impacts, must be the answer. And that requires a different approach than 'producing more food'; it requires thinking in systems thinking and 'producing food in a better way'.Early 2020 the World Bank and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs approached Wageningen University and Research with the question: How resilient are West African food systems and how to strengthen their resilience? The World Bank was in the process of developing a regional programme for that purpose and expressed its interests to Wageningen University & Research to obtain evidenced-based insights that could be used during its consultations and formulation. Wageningen University & Research quickly set up a dedicated team, and invited experts from the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) and Mr. Joost Nelen to join.Diving into the world of West African food systems and their resilience does not provide one with a univocal answer to the questions raised by the World Bank. The systems prove to be very diverse and respond in very different ways to shocks such as provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas some systems show higher levels of resilience, others show important vulnerabilities to specific shocks. Income and power disparities between stakeholders in the systems, such as defined by gender differences, appear to be important, explaining why people's livelihoods are sometimes threatened, while other people have buffers and capacities to respond.

show abstract

Prospects for Livestock-Based Livelihoods in Africa's Drylands

Cited by 25 publications

References 40 publications

Making land grabbable: Stealthy dispossessions by conservation in Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania

Making land grabbable: Stealthy dispossessions by conservation in Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania

Do not transform food systems on the backs of the rural poor

West African food system resilience

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About