In Uganda, Ghana and Bangladesh, participatory tools were used for a socio-economic and gender analysis of three topics: climate-smart agriculture (CSA), climate analogue approaches, and climate and weather forecasting. Policy and programmerelevant results were obtained. Smallholders are changing agricultural practices due to observations of climatic and environmental change. Women appear to be less adaptive because of financial or resource constraints, because of male domination in receiving information and extension services and because available adaptation strategies tend to create higher labour loads for women. The climate analogue approach (identifying places resembling your future climate so as to identify potential adaptations) is a promising tool for increasing farmer-to-farmer learning, where a high degree of climatic variability means that analogue villages that have successfully adopted new CSA practices exist nearby. Institutional issues related to forecast production limit their credibility and salience, particularly in terms of women's ability to access and understand them. The participatory tools used in this study provided some insights into women's adaptive capacity in the villages studied, but not to the depth necessary to address women's specific vulnerabilities in CSA programmes. Further research is necessary to move the discourse related to gender and climate change beyond the conceptualization of women as a homogenously vulnerable group in CSA programmes.

We developed a "continual engagement" model to better integrate knowledge from policy makers, communities, and researchers with the goal of promoting more effective action to balance poverty alleviation and wildlife conservation in 4 pastoral ecosystems of East Africa. The model involved the creation of a core boundary-spanning team, including community facilitators, a policy facilitator, and transdisciplinary researchers, responsible for linking with a wide range of actors from local to global scales. Collaborative researcher−facilitator community teams integrated local and scientific knowledge to help communities and policy makers improve herd quality and health, expand biodiversity payment schemes, develop land-use plans, and fully engage together in pastoral and wildlife policy development. This model focused on the creation of hybrid scientific−local knowledge highly relevant to community and policy maker needs. The facilitation team learned to be more effective by focusing on noncontroversial livelihood issues before addressing more difficult wildlife issues, using strategic and periodic engagement with most partners instead of continual engagement, and reducing costs by providing new scientific information only when deemed essential. We conclude by examining the role of facilitation in redressing asymmetries in power in researcher−community−policy maker teams, the role of individual values and character in establishing trust, and how to sustain knowledge-action links when project funding ends.A lthough pastoralists and rangelands have been the subject of research study for decades around the globe, it is only recently that pastoral communities and policy makers have been part of the research process rather than the subjects of study alone or excluded altogether (1). In Africa, the current structure of academic incentives and poor research funding makes it difficult for local researchers to work closely with pastoral communities over the long term, particularly if those researchers live in cities far from pastoral lands. Researchers from outside the region rarely have the opportunity to engage at the depth and over the time required to ensure research is useful to local actors. Agricultural extension in African pastoral lands is difficult not only because of the mobility of some pastoral populations (2) but also because many extension specialists do not recognize the highly adaptive nature of indigenous pastoral management (3). Pastoral households and communities are often the subjects of postgraduate theses or larger research projects in which students and researchers collect information from households and rangelands but rarely have the funds to interpret and return this information to the communities that provided it (e.g., ref. 4). It is even rarer to find research that, from the outset, integrates communities or policy makers in collaborative efforts for the purpose of creating ''research-action arenas'' (5), wherein different groups are integrated to support local action in an action research framewo...

We applied an innovation framework to sustainable livestock development research projects in Africa and Asia. The focus of these projects ranged from pastoral systems to poverty and ecosystems services mapping to market access by the poor to fodder and natural resource management to livestock parasite drug resistance. We found that these projects closed gaps between knowledge and action by combining different kinds of knowledge, learning, and boundary spanning approaches; by providing all partners with the same opportunities; and by building the capacity of all partners to innovate and communicate.

Journal articleIFPRI3; ISIEPTDP

Understanding and alleviating poverty in Africa continues to receive considerable attention by a range of diverse actors, including politicians, international celebrities, academics, activists, and practitioners. Despite the onslaught of interest, there surprisingly is little agreement on what constitutes poverty in rural Africa, how it should be assessed, and what should be done to alleviate it. Based on data from an interdisciplinary study of pastoralism in northern Kenya, this article examines issues of poverty among one of the continent's most vulnerable groups, pastoralists, and challenges the application of such orthodox proxies as incomes/expenditures, geographic remoteness, and market integration. It argues that current poverty debates 'homogenize' the concept of 'pastoralist' by failing to acknowledge the diverse livelihoods and wealth differentiation that fall under the term. The article concludes that what is not needed is another development label (stereotype) that equates pastoralism with poverty, thereby empowering outside interests to transform rather than strengthen pastoral livelihoods.3

No abstract

We explore the relationship between farming practice changes made by households coping with the huge demographic, economic, and ecological changes they have seen in the last 10 years and household food security. We examine whether households that have been introducing new practices, such as improved management of crops, soil, land, water, and livestock (e.g. cover crops, microcatchments, ridges, rotations, improved pastures, and trees) and new technologies (e.g. improved seeds, shorter-cycle and drought-tolerant varieties) are more likely to be food secure than less innovative farming households. Using data from a baseline household survey carried out in five sites and 700 households in four countries of East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia) across a range of agricultural systems and environments, this study contributes to the evidence base of what smallholders are doing to adapt to changing circumstances, including a changing climate. Lessons from both similarities and differences across sites are drawn. This unique baseline study provides a wide range of indicators of activities and behaviors that will be monitored over time. We found that many households are already adapting to changing circumstances, and their changes tend to be marginal rather than transformational in nature, with relatively little uptake of existing improved soil, water and land management practices. There is a strong negative relationship between the number of food deficit months and innovation, i.e. the least food secure households are making few farming practice changes. This has very different policy and investment implications depending on assumptions made as to the direction of causality.

This article investigates the link between poverty incidence and geographical conditions within rural locations in Kenya. Evidence from poverty maps for Kenya and other developing countries suggests that poverty and income distribution are not homogenous. We use spatial regression techniques to explore the effects of geographic factors on poverty. Slope, soil type, distance/travel time to public resources, elevation, type of land use, and demographic variables prove to be significant in explaining spatial patterns of poverty. However, differential influence of these and other factors at the location level shows that provinces in Kenya are highly heterogeneous; hence different spatial factors are important in explaining welfare levels in different areas within provinces, suggesting that targeted propoor policies are needed. Policy simulations are conducted to explore the impact of various interventions on locationlevel poverty levels. Investments in roads and improvements in soil fertility are shown to potentially reduce poverty rates, with differential impacts in different regions.