Category Archives: Climate Change

CCAFS / CGIAR / Climate Change / Crop-Livestock / Drylands / DRYLANDSCRP / East Africa / Ethiopia / ILRI / Kenya / Somalia / Vulnerability

New initiative to support agro-pastoralists in Africa’s Horn

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Coastweek and Xinhua have published accounts of a new East African dryland food production initiative. The initiative will work towards securing the agro-pastoral livelihoods of poor livestock keepers in the region. ‘Scientists have launched a new initiative to help boost smallholder farmers’ resilience to drought in the Horn of Africa’s drylands. ‘The new initiative supported by … Continue reading →

Africa / Agriculture / Asia / Caribbean / Climate Change / Consumption / Environment / Food Security / Latin America / Markets

Lester Brown on ‘the new geopolitics of food’

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Youth in window of a poor farm household in Milange, located in Zambezia, the most populous province of Mozambique (photo credit: ILRI/Mann). Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, writes in the May/June issue of Foreign Policy on ‘The New Geopolitics of Food: From the Middle East to Madagascar, high prices are spawning land grabs … Continue reading →

Climate Change / Drought / Ethiopia / Kenya / Pastoralism / Somalia / Uganda

Deathly drumbeat of another drought in Africa’s Horn

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A cow felled by disease is skinned and left by the roadside in rural Ethiopia (picture credit: ILRI/Habtamu). ‘A drought in the Horn of Africa, triggered by the same La Niña episode that caused massive flooding in Australia last year, is plunging millions of pastoralists closer to food insecurity. ‘Parts of Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and … Continue reading →

Animal Production / Climate Change / Environment

‘Livestock’s Long Shadow’ rebutted: On the dangers of comparing apples and oranges – and lumping production practices of rich and poor

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The 2006 publication of Livestock’s Long Shadow by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has stirred considerable controversy. Here is the latest rebuttal, showing the fallacy of treating all the world’s animal production as the same kind of ‘beast’. ‘How long is your shadow? The answer, of course, depends, and differs whether you are standing … Continue reading →

Africa / Climate Change / Drought / East Africa / Environment / ILRI / Impact Assessment / Kenya / Livelihoods / Research

Impacts of the Arid Lands Resource Management Project on livelihoods and vulnerability in Kenya

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This Research report by Nancy Johnson and Ayago Wambile on The impacts of the Arid Lands Resource Management Project (ALRMPII) on livelihoods and vulnerability in the arid and semi-arid lands of Kenya was released on 04 April, 2011. There is an urgent need for new approaches and effective models for managing risk and promoting sustainable … Continue reading →

Africa / Agriculture / Climate Change / Crop residues / Environment / Food Security

Climate change, food security and sustainable development

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Expectations were high when the United Nations General Assembly declared 2011 as “International Year of Forest,” having in mind the social, economic and cultural roles that the forests play in communities around the world in the context of global warming, climate change and agricultural development. As such, it was with strong determination that members of … Continue reading →

Agriculture / CCAFS / Climate Change / Food Security / NRM / WLE

Some animals are more equal than others in their greenhouse gas emissions

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The current essay published on the AgClim Letters blog of the ‘Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security’ Research Program this week praises the sensibleness of a recent background study for a Foresight report that ‘provides valuable insight into how our farming and food industry in the UK can contribute to the transition to a green … Continue reading →

CCAFS / Climate Change / Ethiopia / ILRI

State of climate change work in Ethiopia assessed

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An Ethiopian livestock herder in the rain (picture credit: ILRI/Habtamu). A one-day workshop on climate change in Ethiopia, organized by the Climate Change Forum-Ethiopia (CCF-E) and the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research, was held at the Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, campus of International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), yesterday (8 March 2011). At this workshop, the … Continue reading →

Africa / Asia / Biodiversity / Climate Change / Ethiopia / Fodder / Forages / Genebank / ILRI / Latin America / Seeds

ILRI forage germplasm stored in Addis genebank travels to the Arctic’s Svalbard Global Seed Vault

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‘The Svalbard Global Seed Vault celebrated its third anniversary with the arrival of seeds for rare lima beans, blight-resistant cantaloupe, and progenitors of antioxidant-rich red tomatoes from Peru and the Galapagos Islands. The arrival of these collections, including many drought- and flood-resistant varieties, comes at a time when natural and man-made risks to agriculture have … Continue reading →

Climate Change / Environment

Bombshell: The time to start controlling global warming ‘was yesterday’

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A new study projects that half the world’s land-based permafrost will vanish by mid-century on our current greenhouse gas emissions path, turning today’s Arctic carbon into a huge carbon source by the 2020s, at which time the North Pole is expected to be largely ice-free. The thaw and decay of permafrost carbon is irreversible. What … Continue reading →