People-centred livestock development builds on livestock keepers’ own initiatives and efforts, while helping them to use the best of both local and outside knowledge and resources. This literature review summarizes and analyses the experiences of 16 projects and organizations in Africa, Latin America and Europe that use such approaches.
A group of non-government organizations has called on governments and international organizations to support the conservation of livestock breeds in their original habitats – and by the livestock-keeping groups that developed them.
Members of the LIFE Network, a grouping of organizations focusing on local livestock breeds, made the call at a conference at Kuttapalayam, in Tamil Nadu, India, on 13-15 August 2010.
The final statement from the conference calls on the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to promote agro-ecosystems approaches to the management of animal genetic resources and support indigenous and local production systems. These goals are already incorporated in the Global Plan of Action on Animal Genetic Resources.
The NGOs also demanded that livestock keepers be included in the debate about the future of livestock production and to be recognized as guardians of livestock biodiversity.
The conference statement was signed by 21 NGOs from India, South Africa, Kenya, Spain and Germany.
Sets out the biocultural values and explains how the Raika community of Rajasthan have developed and preserved unique breeds of livestock and traditional knowledge associated with them, and how their pastoral lifestyle has developed the co-evolved ecosystem of Rajasthan’s forests which they have traditionally conserved and sustainably used. It details their customary decision making process involved in providing free prior informed consent to any actions that relate to our grazing rights, animal genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge. It illustrates the disastrous impacts that the exclusion of the Raika from previously communal grazing areas and forests is having on their lives, livestock, genetic resources, traditional knowledge and the forest ecosystem itself. It articulates their forest access rights and rights over their genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge under Indian law. It calls upon the National Biodiversity Authority to recognize and support the Raika’s efforts to conserve their livestock breeds, environment and lifestyle.
