At the HOORC Research Forum meeting held last week, Prof Masamaba looked at how a monitoring tool could be developed to perform key surveillance functions in the Okavango Delta in collaboration with government departments and questioned whether the need for monitoring has been clearly articulated. Dr. Murray Hudson, in his presentation, Floodplain vegetation ecology and flooding regime in the...
In its introduction, the editor acknowledges that the elimination of poverty has become the overriding objective of many inter-national development agencies, national governments and NGOs. However, poverty elimination or alleviation is not exclusively a donor driven phenomenon. Most Governments have also committed themselves and have pursued substantive poverty reduction initiatives in terms of...
The seasonality of disease, ill‐health and hunger were illustrated in multiple contexts in the original IDS conference on seasonality over three decades ago. The subsequent book (Chambers et al. 1981) was published in the same year as the first case of AIDS was reported. Since then, the rapidly accelerating AIDS epidemic of the 1990s and its current state of “hyperendemicity” in southern Africa have affected the levels, intensity and nature of vulnerability of households to livelihood shocks and stresses.
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idsseasonality200907.pdf(709.6KB)...
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Africa,
HIV/AIDS,
food security,
South Africa,
impact,
Southern Africa,
renewal,
IFPRI-1,
English,
AFRICA SOUTH OF SAHARA,
Poverty, Health, and Nutrition,
PHND,
HIV/AIDS and Food Security,
GRP-33,
RENEWAL Working Paper,
Livelihoods
In this article, the author, Monica Morrison, looks at how the sharing of knowledge amongst the three countries of Angola, Botswana and Namibia have forged transboundary partnerships for the future of the Okavango River Basin. These partnerships are the Permanent Okavango River Basin Water Commission (OKACOM), the Kavango Transfrontier Park (KAZA), the Orange Sengu River Basin Commission...
According to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's foreword in the Millennium Development Goals Report 2010, improvements in the lives of the poor have been unacceptably slow, and some hard-won gains are being eroded by the climate, food and economic crises. The report further notes that even though the economic crisis took a heavy toll on jobs and incomes around the world, the world is still on...
The story of a special gathering in Venda, South Africa, and a community process in eco-cultural mapping. Indigenous leaders from Altai (Russia) and the Colombian Amazon, and NGO representatives from South Africa, Kenya and Ethiopia, accompany Tshidvizhe community as they explore a simple yet powerful way to express the past and present of their territory and livelihoods onto hand-drawn maps....
Yesterday 18 HOORC winter students made their first proposal presentations in order to get feedback from the audience on the work done so far. Topics covered included an analysis of the water quality in the Thamalakane Rivers, youth entrepreneurship in the tourism industry, benefits of local tourism to local communities, house economy patterns in certain communities, and an analysis of...
Malawi suffers frequent droughts and floods. In an economy that is heavily dependent on the agricultural sector, it is crucial to understand the implications of these extreme climate events. Not only are rural livelihoods affected due to the severe impacts on the agricultural sector, but nonfarm and urban households are also vulnerable given the strong production and price linkages between agriculture and the rest of the economy. This study uses a general equilibrium model to estimate the economywide impacts of drought- and flood-related crop production losses.
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Poverty,
Malawi,
droughts,
floods,
Development Strategy and Governance,
Country Development Strategy,
IFPRI Discussion Paper,
DSGD,
GRP-32,
AGRICULTURAL SECTOR,
Gross Domestic Product (GDP),
households,
CGE Modeling,
Africa,
Southern Africa,
IFPRI-1,
English,
AFRICA SOUTH OF SAHARA,
Livelihoods
According to Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading, there is evidence of natural selection at work in the adaptation of species to their environment. i.e antarctic fish deploy antifreeze proteins to survive in cold water, tasty viceroy butterflies escape predators by looking like toxic monarchs and disease-causing bacteria becomes resistant to antibiotics. He goes to...
The Botswana Red Cross Society in partnership with the International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) and Red Crescent Societies launched a long term, cross border initiative to support chronically vulnerable people living along the Zambezi River basin in seven countries, namely Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Its theme "Early warning, early action" speaks of...
Cities attract millions of people seeking a better life and greater opportunities. However, cities can also be home to poverty, inequality, and environmental hazards. By looking at urban environments as ecosystems, researchers tease apart tensions between ecology, social inequities, and health to help government and the private sector make decisions for healthier, more sustainable ecosystems."...
This picturesque book authored by John mendelsohn, HOORC researchers: Cornelis Vander Post, Lars Ramberg, Mike Murray-Hudson, Piotr Wolski and Keta Mosepe offers the origins, functioning, life and people of the Okavango Delta. It gives a detailed description of the Delta ecosystem , with its changing water patterns and how the this has affected people's livelihoods, especially those who depend...
This publication provides guidance on how to implement the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (CCRF) using an ecosystem approach to fisheries and aquaculture. The CCRF is a voluntary code covering all aspects of the management and development of fisheries and is designed to ensure sustainable development without adversely affecting the livelihoods of local communities that share the...
An AIDS-free generation is not impossible. Yet the world is not on track to meet targets for HIV prevention, treatment, care and support, and the global economic crisis raises concerns about sustaining and expanding assistance. This Fourth Stocktaking Report highlights progress made and challenges that remain in scaling up services for women, children and young people affected by the epidemic,...
Fisheries and aquaculture are being viewed with receiving increasing attention, not only because they represent an important source of livelihoods and food, but also because of our increasing understanding of aquatic ecosystems. Many fish stocks are currently over exploited, and the international nature of the resources makes them difficult to manage. One wonders whether the current food supply...
The lives of millions of poor people is being affected by climate related shocks which are occurring with increasing frequency and severity. Analysts have predicted that without urgent action, recent development progress will stall—then go into reverse.The international community must make a new commitment to fund adaptation to climate change. A global adaptation finance mechanism is needed,...
On World Food Day, Sara Pavenello looks at the plight of pastoralists in northern Kenya.
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For a long time now, Africa despite its abundant natural and human resources, has been beset by poor development performance, stemming mostly from bad political and economic governance, coupled with its lack of will to fulfil its promise of good development outcomes for sustained improvements in the lives of its citizens. In this book, the author states that it is not all doom and gloom. In fact...
Approximately three quarters of the world's poor live in rural areas . Among those, women constitute a particularly vulnerable but important group for social and economic development. So, investing in rural women becomes not only a moral imperative but can be taken as a strategy to effectively fight poverty and hunger. Full report is available on...
Over the next decade, food security in 70 developing countries is projected to deteriorateaccording to USDA’s Economic Research Service. After rising nearly 11 percent from 2007 to 2008, the number of food-insecure people in the developing countries to rise to 833 million in 2009, an almost 2-percent rise from 2008 to 2009. Despite a decline in food prices in late 2008, deteriorating purchasing...
Last week on Thursday, the Waternet students made short presentations on flood or drought disasters in their respective countries namely (Mozambique, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe). For Mozambique, the heavy rains which lasted more than five weeks in 2000, resulted in flooding. Uganda, a country characterised by landslides, and prone to earthquakes, disaster struck in 2004 . Given the fact that it...
This report attempts to understand the extent in which people's voices are heard in the commitment and allocation of resources by donors and African governments. Indicators used to measure this are: poverty, food security, agricultural development, resources for grassroots development, regional integration, education, health, water and sanitation. For more on the report you can...
The Food and Agriculture Fisheries and Aquaculture Department has published the State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA) its flagship publication. This document is published every two years to provide policy-makers, civil society and those whose livelihoods depend on the sector a comprehensive, objective and global view of capture fisheries and aquaculture, including associated policy...
According to the Food And agriculture Organisation, (FAO) , a killer disease is decimating fish stocks in the Zambezi River Valley, threatening the food security and livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people in an area shared by seven southern African countries. The most affected country is Zambia, where two thirds of the Zambezi River Basin lies. This has put over 2,000 villages and some...
INVITATION FOR PAPERSDITSHWANELO, the Botswana Centre for Human Rights, is is inviting submission of abstracts for a land conference to be held during the last week of August 2009.The objective of the conference is to provide key stakeholders with the opportunity to engage on the role of land and related resources in poverty alleviation, particularly among the marginalized sections of the...
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has published a request for proposal for a consultancy to review poverty-environment linkages in Botswana's National Strategy for Poverty Reduction (NSPR). The NSPR, approved by Presidential Directive in 2003, makes limited reference to environmental issues. While programmatic activities such as support for community based natural resources...
ELDIS has alerted us to several recently posted publications about natural resources management relevant to southern Africa.People, protected areas and global change: participatory conservation in Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe, a synthesis of papers about sustainable conservation in protected areas, recommends alternative conservation pathways with new participatory conservation...
UNPulse has alerted us to a new online resource from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD): Learning and knowledge on innovations in water and rural poverty (InnoWat). Described as a kit, the site offers a summary of two approach papers that provide the rationale for the project, topic sheets, fact sheets, tool sheets and case studies. The topic sheets are the backbone of...
Minister of State for Integration, Conor Lenihan TD, visited Concern Worldwide projects in Ngara, Tanzania last week. The visit was part of a week-long official trip, where he also observed the selection process of 80 Congolese refugees identified for resettlement in Ireland.
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HOORC livelihoods and governance researchers Joseph Mbaiwa, Barbara Ngwenya and Lapologang Magole recently returned from a meeting of the International Association for the Study of Commons held in Cape Town on January 20th to 22nd. Policy Forum: Scaling Up Conservation Practices for Natural Resource Commons in Africa was part of the wrapup of the CROSCOG Project. Dr Mbaiwa and Dr Ngwenya, with...