Wildlife and poverty study

Includes bibliographical referencesAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:m03/36627 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreSIGLEGBUnited Kingdo

New tools to connect people and places: the impact of ICTs on learning among resource poor farmers in Bolivia

Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) have the ability to rapidly connect the poor to both wider communities and larger knowledge sets. However, while the use of ICTs in development has increased dramatically in recent years, there is a dearth of evidence regarding the impact and uptake of programmes. Therefore, the following article describes the development of El Promotor, a multi-media, interactive programme for poor farmers on the Bolivian Altiplano. The study further examined the relationship between new and existing knowledge regarding animal health and production among 85 farmers in 13 communities, who utilised the programme. The authors found that the uptake of new knowledge was highly dependent upon the specific topic involved i.e. disease causation, symptoms, treatment and prevention. Not surprisingly, the level of challenge to existing beliefs also impacted learning levels. Nonetheless, by utilising visual referents, which supported customary knowledge, improvements in farmer understanding of disease causation, diagnosis, treatment were noted after use of the programme. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Biodiversity versus emergencies: the impact of restocking on animal genetic resources after disaster

Restocking is a favoured option in supporting livelihoods after a disaster. With the depletion of local livestock populations, the introduction of new species and breeds will clearly affect biodiversity. Nevertheless, the impact of restocking on Animal Genetic Resources has been largely ignored. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to examine the consequences of restocking on biodiversity via a simple model. Utilising a hypothetical project based on cattle, the model demonstrates that more than one-third of the population was related to the original restocked animals after three generations. Under conditions of random breed selection, the figure declined to 20 per cent. The tool was then applied to a donor-led restocking project implemented in Bosnia-Herzegovina. By restocking primarily with Simmental cattle, the model demonstrated that the implementation of a single restocking project is likely to have accelerated the decline of the indigenous Busa breed by a further nine per cent. Thus, greater awareness of the long-term implications of restocking on biodiversity is required

The role of collaborative partnerships in industry innovation: lessons from New Zealand's dairy sector

This study analyzes patterns of collaboration in research and development (R&D) for innovation in New Zealand's dairy industry. Based on a survey of agents contributing to industry innovation, it analyzes existing formal and informal partnerships between R&D organizations and the productive sector and the funding schemes that support such partnerships. The findings suggest that New Zealand's dairy innovation system depends on the capacity of a small number of public and industry agents. Government and industry organizations support innovation initiatives through various funding schemes that do not explicitly foster collaboration, and mechanisms that support informal collaboration are underdeveloped. [EconLit citations: O32, Q13, Q16]. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The impacts of livestock diseases and their control on growth and development processes that are pro-poor

Poverty is now at the heart of development discourse; we discuss how it is measured and understood. We next consider the negative and positive impacts of livestock on pro-poor development. Taking a value-chain approach that includes keepers, users and eaters of livestock, we identify diseases that are road blocks on the ‘three livestock pathways out of poverty’. We discuss livestock impacts on poverty reduction and review attempts to prioritize the livestock diseases relevant to the poor. We make suggestions for metrics that better measure disease impact and show the benefits of more rigorous evaluation before reviewing recent attempts to measure the importance of disease to the poor. High impact of a disease does not guarantee high benefits from its control; other factors must be taken into consideration, including technical feasibility and political desirability. We conclude by considering how we might better understand and exploit the roles of livestock and improved animal health by posing three speculative questions on the impact of livestock diseases and their control on global poverty: how can understanding livestock and poverty links help disease control?; if global poverty reduction was the aim of livestock disease control, how would it differ from the current model?; and how much of the impact of livestock disease on poverty is due to disease control policy rather than disease itself