Within the ecosystems of the East African highlands, people face multiple challenges as they attempt to improve their livelihoods and well-being. Poverty, low agricultural productivity, and resource degradation are widespread. The human population and malnutrition continue to increase. Lack of access to cash and labour is widespread. Farmers lack access to grazing lands. Attempts to address one problem often exacerbate attempts to solve others. The situation is more dramatic in the Ethiopian highlands. Researchers and development workers increasingly recognise that people are part of complex systems called 'ecosystems.' Different categories of people (men and women, old and young, rich and poor etc) occupy different niches or life spaces. They derive different standards of living and affect other ecosystem components including other people in many ways. Independent sectoral approaches to solving the myriad of problems in complex ecosystems do not work. Researchers need a new innovative and integrative or trans-disciplinary paradigm. It must enable researchers from a variety of disciplines to redefine development and environmental degradation in a systems context. It must provide a conceptual framework for identification, testing and adoption of multiple and simultaneous interventions.
Ecosystem approaches and ecosystem health are new ideas that are transforming the traditional sectoral and disciplinary approach to agriculture, land management and human development. A consortium involving the several Ethiopian institutions, international research institutions, and non-governmental organisations facilitated by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) recognised the need for more holistic trans-disciplinary approaches to tackling these complex problems. They posed two basic ideas. One was to test the suitability of the ecosystem health approach to attaining sustainable natural resources management. The second was to test the hypothesis that agro-ecosystems management could provide a complementary approach to delivering improved human health. Through ILRI, they prepared and submitted a proposal, 'Enhanced human well-being through improved livestock and natural resources management' to the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada. In consultation with ILRI, IDRC recognised the need for a new process for project development to enable the definition and pursuit of trans-disciplinary objectives. In brief, trans-disciplinarity requires full participation of all stakeholders. IDRC and ILRI decided that initial funding for the project must enable effective consultation among stakeholders to define and refine the trans-disciplinary objectives. Subsequently, ILRI organised an international workshop (Agro-ecosystems, Natural Resources Management and Human Health Related Research in East Africa) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 11 to 15 May 1998. This proceedings documents the consultation.
Hank Fitzhugh
Director General, ILRI
