International Conference on Sustainable Animal Agriculture for Developing Countries

Innovations for a transition to resilient, climate smart and healthy livestock systems

Livestock is growing in most low-and-middle income countries (LMICs) including Vietnam, providing animal sourced foods (ASF) to consumers as well as contributing to millions of smallholder producers livelihoods. These livestock systems face increasing pressures from climate change, including extreme weather, shrinking feed supplies, and disease outbreaks. At the same time, livestock is a source of greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, novel approaches for transitioning livestock systems to more resilient and sustainable systems are needed. The session will introduce ILRI’s and its partners efforts to support LMICs in their transition to sustainable, low-emission livestock systems with the following objectives:

• Explore innovations and South-South learning to build climate-resilient livestock systems and enhance disease prevention
• Present successful examples to improving livestock health and resilience
• Identify investment, development opportunities, research needs and actions for supporting sustainable, low-emission livestock systems in the region.

A core of ILRI’s efforts to address above challenges is a new innovative platform, The Livestock and Climate Solutions Hub. By uniting research, innovation, partnerships and investments, the Hub will accelerate solutions to the intertwined challenges of climate change and livestock production in the context of existing nutritional deficiencies visavis available animal sourced food in targeted LMICs. The session will introduce the new Hub, followed by short presentations from the region and elsewhere (South-South) summarizing efforts for more resilient livestock system (One Health, livestock genetics, ICT solutions, bundled interventions to enhance productivity, among others). Consecutive group discussions aim to identify researchable areas (short and medium term), practical solutions, and investment needs. In a final plenary actionable step to move ahead will be presented and discussed.