Looking ahead: Elements of future strategies

Previous section The need for informed decision-making

The need for consistent policies

Any sustainable livestock development strategy has to fully recognize the set of objectives which govern behaviour. For many farmers, the first priority is household food security and family welfare. Less tangible future sustainability of resource use is often traded off against immediate food needs. At a policy level, social and economic objectives may be in conflict with environmental objectives or have different time scales.

With multiple objectives in play a balance must be found between different production systems in different agro-ecological zones or regions, and technological options that govern resource use. The environment warrants government attention as a public good in addition to others, such as public health, equality and economic growth. Policy choices must be consistent with each other and be brought into the wider context of sustainable development. For example, subsidies on feed grains may help to supply inexpensive livestock products to urban centres and develop a "modern" livestock industry but, as has been seen, they often misdirect technology and resource use. It is therefore important to screen all relevant policies against internal consistency and their contribution to overall policy objectives. Once the objectives have been set, it is necessary to assess how current policies and operational measures support or act against these objectives.

In the above analysis we have identified policies that make neither economic nor environmental sense (what may be called a lose-lose situation). These are poorly informed, formulated or simply misguided policies, or the result of the domination of certain interest groups. With growing trade liberalization and reduced public expenditure these are being corrected in many cases. Examples are land titling through ranching in South America or the beef and milk tariff policies of the Common Agricultural Policy in the EU after the initial post-war justification become irrelevant. Here, political will must exist to accept possible negative public reaction from the beneficiaries of those policies. This political will is particularly important in countries with strong livestock interest groups.

Other policies make economic sense mainly in the short term, but have negative environmental effects (what may be called a win-lose scenario) in the long term. An example is road construction in tropical forest areas where land requirements and development needs may be in direct conflict with conservation objectives. Here, it is necessary to formulate local and specific complementary measures (i.e. protected areas, institutional development) to minimize the trade-off. As has been shown, the majority of negative livestock impacts on the environment fall into this category.

A third set of policies are those that make both economic and environmental sense, but often do not pay off in the short term. These win-win situations are, for example, the reduction of methane emissions through increased animal productivity, livestock-wildlife integration and the use of slaughter waste for alternative feed or energy sources. However, problems occur because benefits that accrue to the global common goods are only slightly or not tangible for the originator of these benefits. A completely new set of mechanisms with novel financing approaches needs to be designed for the protection of these global commons.

In summary, there is a need to:

- set realistic objectives - environmental, economic, social - and decide on the balance between these objectives where trade-offs exist; identify critical conflict areas between broad social or economic objectives and environmental goals; identify policies that bear the potential for trade conflicts and try to negotiate bilateral arrangements;
- develop the analytical skills to screen and monitor policies for their desired and undesired effects;
- correct policies which are misguiding resource use or which have perverse effects; target policies carefully and as directly as possible avoiding sweeping arrangements for cost-effectiveness and;
- develop support schemes to finance accelerated adoption of win-win solutions such as benefit sharing through national and international arrangements, such as GEF.

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