Every month, one more livestock breed becomes extinct…

This 8-page booklet and accompanying poster, published by the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development and the LIFE Network, highlight the issues and offer some solutions.

Download booklet 393 kb (in English)

Download poster 423 kb (in English and German)

Camel prices are rising in Rajasthan, in India’s arid west. But camel numbers have declined significantly, says a news story in The Hindu on 29 April 2008.

“The spiralling fuel prices changed it all,” says the leading Indian daily.

“In the past three years the price a camel can fetch when sold went up at least by three times. The camels are replacing tractors,” the paper quotes LIFE Network member Ilse Koehler-Rollefson.

Read the full article.

Pakistan is home to many different groups of pastoralists. Each group has developed its own breeds of camels, cattle, sheep, goats and donkeys.

Now Abdul Raziq, President of the NGO SAVES and member of the Department of Livestock Management at the University of Agriculture in Faisalabad, has produced a brief illustrated guide to some of these unique breeds.

Download 740 kb

An international seminar on The Camel in Rajasthan: From Heirloom to Unique Selling Point will be held in Jaipur on 7-8 April 2008.

International and Indian camel experts and Rajasthan camel breeders will discuss ways to promote camel husbandry in Rajasthan.

The seminar will address two themes: developing the dairy potential of camels, and a strategy for making Rajasthan camel-friendly.

The seminar will take place at the Hotel Jai Mahal, Ajmer Road, Jaipur. It is organized by LIFE Network member Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan (LPPS) with support from the Ford Foundation.

More information

LPPS head office: tel. 02934-285086, mobile 9414818564, email lpps@sify.com

Jaisalmer office: tel. 02992-250652, 254452, email camelherds@yahoo.co.in

Keepers of Genes, a 28-minute documentary produced by award-winning filmmaker Moving Images, documents the role played by pastoralists in preserving animal biodiversity and the key issues confronting them today.

The film accompanies a 2007 book, Keepers of genes: The interdependence between pastoralists, breeds, access to the commons, and livelihoods, by Ilse Koehler-Rollefson and the LIFE Network.

Order copies of the film and book from the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development, or the film from Moving Images

The annual camel fair in the town of Mangrota, in Pakistan’s Punjab, is the largest such event in the area. It attracts camel breeders and buyers from all over the Suleiman mountains in arid northeastern Balochistan.

The fair is similar to one in Pushkar, in neighbouring Rajasthan, India.

Abdul Raziq Kakar of the University of Agriculture in Faisalabad and president of the non-government organization SAVES, says that security concerns have led to fewer camels and traders at the fair in recent years.

SAVES works for the betterment of pastoral people in Pakistan by providing free training, seminars and medical services.

Check Abdul Raziq’s description of the fair and its camels here 636 kb.

Tola Ram Bhil performs in Europe

The hills were alive with a different kind of music - the Raika in Switzerland

Meeting a Swiss shepherdess on the mountain trail

The Raika with Spanish sheep herds in a rally through the streets of Madrid

Nomadic pastoralists use drylands in a sustainable and “natural” manner. That is well supported by ecological studies. Keeping animals on the move means they can use seasonal resources and protects vegetation from overgrazing.

In drought-prone Rajasthan, mobile livestock keeping is a traditional way to use the land - though government policies are not kind to this way of life.

Recently a group of Raika - a prominent pastoralist group in Rajasthan - had the chance to project their traditional knowledge in managing livestock in dry areas to an international audience in three European countries.

Composed of Rama Ram, Dailibai, and Mangi Lal Raika, all from Pali District, the delegation was headed by Hanwant Singh, director of Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan. The Raikas were accompanied by Tola Ram Bhil, a musician and bard from Jodhpur.

The mission created quite a buzz wherever they went. The purpose of the tour was to raise awareness about the pressures on the pastoralist way of life and the crucial role of pastoralists in managing livestock biodiversity.

The tour was arranged by the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development with support from the Christensen Fund.

The first stop on the tour was at the headquarters of the League, in the small village of Wembach in Germany. Here the group was surprised to learn that the local shepherd was employed in nature conservation: he used his sheep to maintain the biodiversity of rich patches of land in a government-sponsored programme.

The Raika also visited a goat dairy and an organic farm, besides enthralling local media with their trademark red turbans and Tola Ram’s spell-binding music, relating how the first camels were brought to Rajasthan about 700 years ago.

The next destination was Switzerland, where the delegation participated in the First International Conference on Animal Genetic Resources and joined other pastoralists in the Animal Diversity Forum, a parallel NGO event that was co-organised by the LIFE Network for community-based management of animal genetic resources and other NGOs. An excursion took them high up into the Alpine meadows where they exchanged experiences with a young woman goat herder who spends the summers in total isolation in the mountain pastures, processing the goat milk into cheese.

The final leg of the trip was to Spain to attend a Global Gathering of Pastoralists organised by the Spanish shepherd association. In Spain too, there is recognition of the value of pastoralism for biodiversity conservation, and the century-old system of transhumance between the coastal lowlands and the central plateau has been revived. Traditional passageways for sheep, hundreds of feet wide, are once again being used. The right of shepherds to drive their herds through the centre of Madrid has also been re-established, and is occasion for a big annual festival.

This year, the Spanish sheep herds were joined by the over 200 pastoralists in their rally through Madrid. The rally ended on the Plaza Mayor in front of the city administration. Dozens of journalists were waiting to get quotes and sound bites from the pastoralists.

The Raika rounded off their eventful trip with a side-event at a meeting of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, where they organised a side-event on “The Role of Pastoralists in Conserving Biodiversity", showing the Film “Keepers of Genes. India’s Pastoralists and their Breeds”.

The Raika were not only excellent ambassadors for their home country, but brought back many lasting impressions. According to Rama Ram, the most useful learning was how highly valued pastoralism is in Europe as a tool for nature conservation and a source of specialty products.

A group of Raika herders from Rajasthan, India, will be leaving on 26th August for Europe to speak up about their rights at a series of international gatherings dealing with issues crucial to the continuation of their traditional livelihoods. The Raika are the nomadic camel and sheep breeders of Rajasthan who are famous for having created some of the country’s best livestock breeds, but whose future is on the brink, as their traditional pastures are dwindling away. The government has been given preference to irrigation agriculture, and is now in the process of allotting so-called wastelands – that actually represent customary grazing areas – for bio-diesel cultivation.

From 1-7 September, the delegation will attend the First International Conference on Animal Genetic Resources in Interlaken (Switzerland), together with more than 200 government delegates from around the world. This conference has been convened by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations to discuss strategies for countering the dramatic rate of extinction of farm animal breeds that is regarded as a threat to future food security. The reason for this trend, among others, is that industrialized livestock farming systems are expanding while the farmers and herders that keep locally adapted breeds are being squeezed out.

The goal of the Raika and other representatives of herding cultures is to convince the governments that they should be given an official role in efforts to conserve animal genetic resources. They emphasize that many breeds will only survive, if they themselves are given grazing rights and are lobbying for reference to Livestock Keepers’ Rights in the official documents of the meeting. Livestock Keepers Rights are a bundle of rights or principles that would ensure that traditional livestock keepers can continue to make a living from their animals and thereby sustain the diverse breeds that compose biodiversity and are considered essential for long-term human food security. While African countries have strongly supported inclusion of Livestock Keepers Rights, other countries have not taken up the issue, and the term remains “bracketed” (subject to further discussion).

From 8-12 September, the Raika will attend an International Gathering of Nomads and Pastoralists held near Segovia in Spain. They will also participate in a meeting convened in Madrid by the governments that have signed the United Nations Convention on Combating Desertification (UNCCD) to emphasize that pastoralism (or herding) makes an important contribution to conserving biodiversity in drylands. While scientists have accumulated evidence for the positive interlinkage between grazing and biodiversity, the UNCCD has not yet acknowledged this connection.

The group composed of Mangilal Raika, Ramu Ram Raika and Srimati Daili Devi Raika will be accompanied by Tola Ram Bhil, a Bhopa (traditional musician) who is specialized in performing the story of how their ancestor, Harmel Ram Raika, brought the first female camels to Rajasthan. The tour is facilitated by the NGO Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan, whose director, Hanwant Singh Rathore will act as translator for the group.

On the way to Switzerland, the group will spend time in Germany at the invitation of the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development, an organization that is supporting pastoralists and other marginalized livestock keepers throughout the world through training and advocacy for favourable policy frameworks. In Germany, the Raika will interact with local sheep and cattle herders and learn from them about the use of herding animals in nature conservation. In many countries in Europe, grazing with sheep and other species is used to conserve certain cultural landscapes as well as types of plants, and therefore supported by the government.

Contacts

Hanwant Singh Rathore, Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan (India), www.lpps.org, mobile +94-148-18564; phone +94-2934-285086

Ilse Koehler-Rollefson, League for Pastoral Peoples (Germany), www.pastoralpeoples.org, +49-6154-53642, ilse@pastoralpeoples.org

This text in Word format

Six experts from different parts of the world answer this question in interviews with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

“Veterinary services have been privatized - drugs are too expensive”, says Thomas Loquang (left), a Ugandan livestock keeper and representative of the pastoralist community of Karamoja in Uganda. The community depends very much on indigenous knowledge for taking care of their livestock, including animal health and production. Thomas urges for support in conserving Karamoja’s indigenous breeds and strengthening livestock keepers’ rights through better infrastructure and veterinary services.

Patrick Mulvaney of British NGO Practical Action says that livestock keepers’ rights are needed to protect livestock and livelihoods.

Click here to listen to all six interviews.

The first draft report on the State of the World’s Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture has been published by FAO.

This report covers the state of agricultural biodiversity in the livestock sector, livestock sector trends, capacities in animal genetic resource management, the management of animal genetic resources, and needs and challenges.

The report is expected to be adopted by the First International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources on 1-7 September 2007 in Interlaken, Switzerland.

Section 1C, on flows of animal genetic resources, was prepared by LPP’s Evelyn Mathias, Ilse Koehler-Rollefson and Paul Mundy.

Click here to download Section 1C only 1240 kb

Click here to download whole document 2.43 Mb (for first section, which gives access to other chapters as separate downloads)

About 50 stakeholders in livestock keeping, breeding and management from nine African countries, Europe and India met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 24-25 May 2007, to discuss the future of Africa’s domestic livestock and poultry breeds and diversity.

The participants urged that Livestock Keepers’ Rights be adopted into the agenda of the intergovernmental Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. They also pointed to the need to investigate the implications of patenting and other forms of intellectual property rights on the sustainable management of animal genetic resources.

The meeting was organized by the Ethiopian Society of Animal Production, , the Ethiopian Institute of Biodiversity Conservation, the International Endogenous Livestock Development Network, the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development, the LIFE Network, and Pastoralist Forum Ethiopia.

Summary report 56 kb

Issue 5 (April 2007) of the People and Livestock newsletter focuses on endogenous livestock development. The newsletter is now published by the Endogenous Livestock Development Network, www.eldev.net.

Read online or download 158 kb, 9 pages

The interdependence between pastoralists, breeds, access to the commons, and livelihoods

This book by Ilse Köhler-Rollefson and the LIFE Network focuses on a key threat to the survival of pastoralists and their livestock breeds: the loss of access to grazing and water. Pastoralists are losing their traditional pasturelands for many reasons - new restrictions on grazing in nature reserves, the expansion of irrigated agriculture, expropriation by settled villagers, and the elimination of fallow land because of intensified cropping.

Less grazing land means that pastoralists cannot maintain a herd large enough to be economic. Many are forced to give up livestock production altogether. That does not just mean the loss of livelihoods for the pastoralists themselves. It also means settled villagers can no longer rely on the hardy stock from pastoralists to pull their ploughs and provide them with meat and milk. And it spells doom for many valuable livestock breeds and the gene pool they represent.

Based on years of research in rural India, this book has wide applicability to other parts of the world where pastoralism is important. It forms a valuable input to the First International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources, to be held in Interlaken, Switzerland, in September 2007.

Download 1589 kb, 80 pages

Pastoralists present a statement to Dr DK Sadana, Director of the National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources

Lobbying by LIFE-Network India is beginning to bear fruit as policy changes that benefit indigenous livestock and rural livelihoods.

For example, the scope of the “Recognition of Forest Rights Bill 2005”, that originally only gave rights to forest-dwelling tribes, was expanded to include the grazing rights of nomadic and settled pastoralist communities in forests. This legislation was passed by parliament on 7 December, 2006.

The National Draft Policy on Farmers emphasises the close relationship between livestock keeping, sustainable livelihoods, and access to grazing land. It spells out the need for securing pastoralists’ forest grazing rights, including in national parks and other protected areas.

An increasing number of Indian government actors are starting to take notice of the role of pastoralists as custodians of livestock breeds and their role on conserving biodiversity.

Further details 27 kb

Conserving animal biodiversity and creating rural employment can go hand in hand – an Indian NGO is showing the way.

Camels are part of the past? Not according to Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan, a Rajasthan-based NGO and LIFE Initiative member.

The Indian NGO is running a project to boost the value of camel products such as milk and ice cream. Camel milk, the “white gold of the desert", is highly nutritious and is used traditionally to treat tuberculosis and typhoid. According to scientists, it may also have a positive effect on patients with HIV/AIDS, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

Further details 63 kb

Pastoralists and other livestock keepers should have the right to participate in formulating national policies. That was one of the conclusions of a workshop on Pastoralists, Livestock Keepers Rights and Animal Genetic Resources, on 24 to 26 February 2007.

Around 100 pastoralists from all over India attended the workshop in Sadri, Rajasthan, along with delegations from Mongolia, Iran and the Philippines.

The workshop also demanded official recognition for pastoralists as custodians of animal genetic resources. Their mobile way of life and their traditional rights to use forest lands and other natural resources must be protected, said participants.

An international meeting followed immediately after the national workshop. Participants from Bangladesh, China, Germany, India, Iran, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Thailand, the UK and Vietnam, along with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, clarified the concept of Livestock Keepers’ Rights. This a bundle of rights and recommendations for strengthening the role of livestock keepers in animal genetic resource management.

Issues discussed included:

• The loss of grazing land and traditional knowledge, leading to the erosion of animal genetic resources
• The dangers of intensive, industrial food production systems and their narrowing of animal genetic diversity
• The threat to the right of livestock keepers to breed their own animals
• The lack of support for Livestock Keepers’ Rights from governments worldwide
• The need to build the capacity of livestock keepers

Report from the two meetings: 326 kb

The LIFE Network will host an international workshop on “Livestock Keepers and the Management of Animal Genetic Resources: Roles, Rights, and Responsibilities” in Sadri, Rajasthan, India, on 26-28 February 2007.

Registration and accommodation are free, but participants must cover their own expenses. The organizers may be able to provide assistance in certain cases.

Further information: 47 kb

On this year’s Human Rights’ Day, 10th December, representatives of herding communities from all over India rallied in Delhi to draw attention to their plight and discuss strategies for reviving their customary grazing rights. For hundreds of years these mobile livestock keepers have held together rural life by providing draught animals, milk, meat, wool, manure, and general eco-system services.

But in the last several decades these diverse and colourful people that include the Raika and Gujjar of Rajasthan, the Maldhari of Gujarat, the Gaddi in Himachal, Bakkarwal in Kashmir, Van Gujjar in Uttaranchal, Changpa in Ladakh, Golla in Orissa, Kuruba in Karnataka, Toda and Konar in Tamil Nadu, and many more, have felt the squeeze of “development” and of generally unsympathetic government policies. The establishment of wildlife sanctuaries and national parks, joint-forest management schemes, allotment of common land for commercial plantation or bio-diesel cultivation, expansion of irrigation agriculture are all developments that have constricted their customary grazing areas.

The situation is much the same throughout India, says Perumal Vivekanandan of the NGO SEVA in Madurai. “The present situation of humiliation and harassment is forcing many herders to abandon their traditional life style. This is also leading to the disappearance of hardy indigenous livestock breeds, such as camels, Kankrej cattle, Gir cattle, Nari cattle, Malaimadu cattle, Neeli Ravi buffalo, Toda buffalo, Kachakatti black sheep, Pulikkulam cattle and many others that can cope with difficult environmental conditions. It means a loss of an important part of India’s biodiversity and cultural heritage, as well as an environmentally sustainable way of life”.

There is now danger that the grazing rights that the herders once enjoyed will be abolished unceremoniously, according to Hanwant Singh Rathore, director of the NGO Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan working with pastoralists in Rajasthan. “The Raika Sangarsh Samiti has requested clarification from the Supreme Court about their grazing rights in the Kumbalgarh Sanctuary. Now the Chief Wildlife Warden of Rajasthan has recommended that no grazing be allowed. If the Supreme Court supports this, it means that existing rights have just been done away with.”

Dr. Minoti Chakravarty-Kaul, a retired economics professor from Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi, who has undertaken long-term research with Gaddi pastoralists, points out that transhumance is a sustainable system of forage utilization and livestock production that saves the Government tremendous costs. Three dams constructed in the foothills of the Siwaliks have forced the Gaddis to change their migration patterns with deleterious effects for themselves and the environment. Ignoring the needs and the experience-based wisdom of pastoralists will lead to a tremendous loss of social capital and destroy a system of self-governed livelihoods which cost the governments next to nothing.

Ironically, demand for the products of pastoralists is on an unprecedented high: practically all the goat meat in India is produced by such herding groups; there is a huge need for manure for fruit cultivation, organic agriculture and to sustain crop yields in general, while camel milk is making headlines as treatment for diabetes.

Dr. Ilse Köhler-Rollefson of the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development, an international NGO based in Germany and with long-term involvement in India, believes that pastoralism is necessary to sustain the environment. “In Germany, when people stopped grazing livestock in the forests, this led to a change in vegetation, totally altering the landscape. The government now actually pays herders to graze their animals in the forest and to maintain the pasture landscape that people see as their bio-cultural heritage.”

In India, two important pieces of policy and legislation in draft form support the cause of pastoralists. The draft National Policy for Farmers that has been circulated by the Ministry of Agriculture in April 2006 has emphasized in its Section 2.4.8.4 the need for securing pastoralists’ forest grazing rights including those areas which are declared as Joint Forest Management, Wildlife Sanctuaries and National Parks. The Recognition of Forest Rights Bill 2005 tabled in Parliament by a Joint Parliamentary Committee has also underscored in Chapter II Section 3-d the forest grazing rights of nomadic and settled pastoralist communities.

But there is strong resistance against these policies becoming law, especially among environmentalists. The herders hope that their meeting in Delhi will help to push them a little bit closer to reality. Until and unless such policies are implemented, pastoralism in India is likely to become a piece of the past.

About the meeting

The herders meeting took place from 8-10 December in Delhi. On 10th December morning, a function was held in the India International Centre. The event was organized by members of the LIFE-Network, which is a group of NGOs and representatives of pastoralists communities that promote community based conservation and development of animal breeds and species.

The LIFE Network was initiated when NGOs and pastoralists gathered at Sadri, Rajasthan during a workshop on livestock keepers rights in the year 2000 organized by Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan (LPPS) and the League for Pastoral Peoples. At present the LIFE-Network in India is coordinated by the NGO SEVA that is based at Madurai.

Contact for more information:

Perumal Vivekanandan, SEVA, 45, T.P.M. Nagar, Virattipathu, Madurai 625 010, Tamil Nadu, India. Tel. 0452-238 00 82, 238 09 43 (O), 0452-238 36 19 ®, fax (pp) 0452-230 04 25, e-mail numvali@sancharnet.in, website www.seva-ngo.org

Hanwant Singh Rathore, Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan (LPPS), PO Box 1, Sadri 306702, District Pali, Rajasthan. Tel. 02934-285086, mobile 9414818564, e-mail lpps@sify.com, website www.lpps.org

Prof Dr Minoti Chakravarty-Kaul. Apt C-59,
Uttaranchal CGHS, 5 I.P. Extension, Patpargunj, Delhi 110092. Tel. 2272-0928 (fax on tel-demand), mobile 9873420089, email minoti.chakravartykaul@gmail.com

Dr Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development, Germany. Mobile in India 9829477535, e-mail ilse@pastoralpeoples.org, website www.pastoralpeoples.org

Diversity in our livestock is essential to confront future threats to food supplies, but livestock breeds are becoming extinct at the rate of 5% per year.

Local livestock keepers and pastoralists hold the key to keeping this diversity alive - but only if their rights are recognized.

On World Food Day, 16 October 2006, the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development organized a workshop where small-scale livestock keepers and pastoralists from Africa, Asia and Latin America demanded the safeguarding of Livestock Keepers’ Rights to the genes of their breeds.

Timetable and presentations (from the LPP website)

More information:

• English 226 kb
• Français 119 kb
• Deutsch 241 kb

On 16-18 October 2006, the LIFE Initiative and the League for Pastoral Peoples will host an international workshop on “The future of animal genetic resources: Under corporate control or in the hands of farmers and pastoralists?“

The workshop, to be held in Bonn, Germany, will prepare for FAO’s First International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources, to be held in Interlaken in September 2007.

The Bonn workshop will enable civil society organizations dealing with environment and development to focus on issues of biotechnology, biopiracy, animal welfare and livestock biodiversity. It aims to:

• Draw attention to the Interlaken Conference and its importance
• Raise awareness on the related topics
• Identify potential for action
• Devise cooperation opportunities.

pdf

doc

Read online or download. 76 kb, 6 pages

Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan has launched a project to promote camels as a source of income in Rajasthan’s deserts.

The project will:

• Educate and raise awareness of traditional camel breeding communities about new marketing options
• Support camel breeders in innovating their production systems
• Establish linkages with research institutes
• Liaise with and lobby government agencies for an appropriate policy framework
• Catalyze private sector involvement and investment in manufacturing and marketing camel products
• Strengthen camel breeders’ organisation to retain ownership of production processes
• Facilitate establishment of a common platform for all stakeholders in the camels.

LPPS has opened an office in Jaisalmer to manage this project. Contact:

Hanwant Singh Rathore
Reviving Rajasthan’s Camel Husbandry Project
LPPS, Plot #760, Anchalwansi Colony, Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India
Tel. 02992-250652, mobile 09414818564
camelherds@yahoo.co.in, www.lpps.org

Reviving Rajasthan’s Camel Husbandry is a project of Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan, conducted in cooperation with the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development in the context of the LIFE Network and supported by the Ford Foundation.

More information: 213 kb, 131 kb

Why pastoralists need help to conserve livestock biodiversity

Old myths can die hard.

Many policy makers still think that desertification is caused by overgrazing by irresponsible pastoralists - even though scientists have shown that keeping large numbers of livestock is the most productive and sustainable use for drylands.

The World Day to Combat Desertification, 17 June 2006, is an ideal time to focus on the important, but little-recognized, role that pastoralists play in conserving the world’s livestock biodiversity. This role is being threatened by the expansion of crop agriculture into grazing lands and the spread of “livestock monocultures” of high-yielding, but high-input breeds.

More information:

• In English 46 kb
• In German 46 kb

In September 2007, the town of Interlaken, Switzerland, will host a major international conference on animal genetic resources.

The First International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources comes at a time when the livestock sector is increasingly coming under the control of private firms. Livestock keepers are in danger of losing their rights to their own animals: their traditional rights to grazing lands, and the right to breed, sell and even to keep animals.

The LIFE Network is planning a series of activities to highlight the role of livestock keepers in creating and maintaining livestock biodiversity, and to press for their rights.

Click here for more information. 64 kb.

Documentation of animal genetic resources: the LIFE method

Ilse Köhler-Rollefson and Hanwant Singh Rathore

LEISA Magazine, March 2006

Describes the LIFE approach to documenting livestock keepers’ knowledge about their breeds.

Download 310 kb, 3 pages

Conference on livestock biodiversity, indigenous knowledge and and intellectual property rights, organized by the League for Pastoral Peoples in Bellagio, Italy, 27 March - 2 April 2006

Purpose

To discuss the following issues:

• How to endorse and acknowledge the role of livestock keepers in conserving diversity and ensure that their contribution to the sustainable use of animal genetic resources is rewarded and supported.
• What are the legal options for protecting animal breeding related indigenous knowledge in the context of existing legal frameworks and emerging opportunities and new models. What are the respective advantages and disadvantages?

Still a viable livelihood option?

Workshop report compiled by Chakrawarti Singh and Ilse Koehler-Rollefson

Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan, 2005

Summary and recommendations from a workshop with more than 50 sheep pastoralists from Rajasthan. Participants urged the the government to implement recommendations on grazing and fodder, marketing, services, institutional changes, indigenous knowledge and research.

Download 337 kb, 30 pages

Read online or download. 293 kb, 6 pages

Documenting animal breeds and breeding from a community perspective

Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan and Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, 2005

This manual describes the threats to indigenous breeds of livestock, and how to document them as a first step in conserving them in collaboration with the communities where they evolved. The manual was produced with support from GTZ.

Download 530 kb, 80 pages

Contact: Ms Aghaghia Rahimzadeh, Secretariat, The World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous Peoples (WAMIP), c/o CENESTA, 5 Lakpour Lane, Suite 24 , Langary Street, IR-16936 Tehran, Iran
Tel. +98 21 296-4114/15/16, fax +98 21 295-4217
Email aghaghia@cenesta.org, website www.iucn.org/themes/ceesp/WAMIP/WAMIP.htm

Read online or download. 284 kb, 7 pages

This paper provides arguments for an international agreement to govern the genetic resources of farm animals. How can breeds and genes be conserved, where are the biodiversity hotspots, and what should an international agreement cover?

Click here for a summary

Download 229 kb, 29 pages