Workshop
Partnering with the Ethiopian government and IGAD to map livestock routes
SPARC has joined livestock experts at the Federal Government of Ethiopia and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development to map, for the first time, the country’s main livestock routes.
Event date and time 9:00am EAT
SPARC is joining livestock experts at the Federal Government of Ethiopia and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) to pinpoint and map the country’s main livestock routes. The process will be the first time experts seek to document the exact location and condition of major livestock routes across Ethiopia.
At a series of consultative workshops from February 26th to 28th in Adama, Ethiopia, SPARC researchers will join specialists from the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Irrigation and Lowland, as well as IGAD, to identify and produce livestock route maps at the national level. These maps will - where available - include data on the status of livestock routes (functional or non-functional), as well as the distribution of water points, veterinary posts, markets, and the grazing and resting areas that pastoralists use.
The process will include mapping livestock routes on to country/region level topographical maps, and the listing of services and their status, before the maps are validated. Once finalised, digital versions of the maps will be shared with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries. The maps will inform the national information systems the government uses to make decisions about protecting routes and providing services along them. This includes land use and development planning, for natural resource management, and for service delivery for livestock and people.
SPARC will hold a second livestock routes mapping workshop in Kenya with experts from the livestock sector and the national government in March. SPARC is leading this process after the IGAD Centre for Pastoral Areas and Livestock Development (ICPALD) requested it as a key contribution to the implementation of the IGAD Protocol on Transhumance.
The workshops are part of ongoing research SPARC is carrying out on the ‘Mapping of livestock routes and land use changes in countries in the IGAD region’. This work includes exploring in detail instances where livestock routes have been blocked and/or conflict over use has arisen.
Find out more about the mapping workshop in Ethiopia in this blog here.
A Ghibe Valley farmer in south-west Ethiopia
Credit Photo by Apollo Habtamu / ILRI - CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
