Looking ahead: Elements of future strategies

Previous section The need for consistent policies

The need for institutional development

With the livestock sector under pressure from surging demand and competition for resources, there is an increasing need for a legal basis with well-defined and enforceable rules and institutions for resource utilization. In fact, a major underlying cause for important externalities is the insufficiently defined access to resources, like open access grazing land for pastoral systems or the use of surface water for the uncontrolled discharge of waste of industrial production systems or processing units. To a certain extent this restricts private behaviour, sometimes resulting in pressure against which the political will has to resist. Institutional development requires:

Preparation of a regulatory framework:

- to establish clear access rights to land. Clear rights of access to land is a necessary although rarely sufficient condition to provide the economic and social incentives to motivate people to protect and improve resources, particularly where traditional regimes of resource management come under pressure such as in pastoral systems and tropical rainforests;
- for land use and regional planning, to establish protected areas for fragile eco-systems, with due attention to local capacity to enforce the protection, and to establish zoning for industrial production systems, to bring the animal densities in line with the absorptive capacity of land and water through quota systems;
- to prescribe regulations for waste control, use of noxious substances, management practices and labeling.

Empowerment of formal and informal institutions where the regulatory framework is available but insufficiently respected or enforced, by providing mandates and support. For pastoral systems in particular, the principle of subsidiarity (Swift, 1995) needs to be applied by transferring responsibility for resource management to the lowest possible level, local groups.

Establishment of a legal authority for the implementation of environmental policies, preferably including an independent non-line agency with a mandate to monitor the use and protection of resources;

Use of participatory approaches in strategy formulation, planning and programme implementation.

Next section The need to get prices right

[Livestock & Environment Toolbox Home]
[Livestock & the Environment - Issues and Options Home]