Our mission is to transform the role of research in development by centering it on the lived experiences, knowledge, and agency of producers, particularly farmers and herders, through collaborative, practice-led approaches. We engage diverse stakeholders, including institutions, in building on inclusive, producer-led solutions that respect everyday expertise.
By challenging traditional power dynamics and reframing narratives around the “local,” we aim to empower farmers and herders as innovators and leaders in their own right:
- Pioneer-Positive Deviance (P-PD) is an approach focused on leveraging locally derived solutions, championed by farmers themselves. Rather than imposing pre-defined practices, P-PD encourages a co-design process, where researchers, extension workers, and farmers collaborate as equal partners to develop and refine adaptation strategies. A core component of this approach is the identification and support of pioneer households - those households that have already begun adapting successfully to the impact of climate change on livestock.
- Additional scaling strategies can be leveraged through partner networks (and Living Labs) for inclusive scaling of innovation cases promoted by grassroot actors, protecting their rights and business interests.
- Through Living Labs, we strive to create equitable spaces where research acts not on behalf of, but in partnership with, farming and herding communities to drive sustainable change.
Through these partnerships, we aim to support the adaptive capacity of farmers and herders, but also to foster mitigation co-benefits. By strengthening adaptations through endogenous solutions, we can enhance sustainability and secure livelihoods, creating models that can be shared and adapted across other communities and agricultural landscapes. This approach respects the knowledge and agency of farmers and herders, placing them at the center of livestock innovation.
